Mudroom Storage Bench

Hello All,

Thought this was a worthy project for my first post. I was inspired by entry room benches with integrated coat racks available in a few catalogs but thought I could build something bigger & better. I previously built a good sized wine table/wine rack out of Baltic Birch (which I will post later this weekend) and liked the quality & look of BB. I only used water based Poly for the wine table and I knew I wanted to finish the storage bench differently. I decided to take a chance with a first coat of General Finishes Seal-A-Cell clear followed by two coats of General Finishes Arm-R-Seal. I am very happy with the deeper/richer color that the Seal-A-Cell brought out of the BB and the topcoat finish is very smooth.

I knew where to find 5’ x 5’ BB and tuned my storage bench design around the dimensions of the BB sheets. I settled on a 5’ tall by 51” wide piece plus an extra 12” high top. Sounds a little weird but I wanted the piece to look taller versus wider. The cool part was that the vertical supports are 5’ x 20” so I got three per sheet and the local lumber shop was nice enough to cut the sheets to size at no extra cost. The whole storage bench took only four sheets of BB. The bench has slots cut out but is supported nicely by a last minute idea to attach full height boards with the hinges to the back sheet.

I also used this project as an excuse to get a Kreg pocket hole jig. Thought it would be nice to show off the wood and not have any screws showing on the front bench face or side panels. My next big project idea is a cabinetry constructed router table + drill press table + miter saw stand + dust collector + drawers for the back wall of the garage. Similar to the New Yankee Workshop south wall project.

Regards,
Paul