1950s church pews #1: a house full of pews!

These have been on my front porch for a couple weeks now, had to do something with them while the weather was still nice.

So today I began dismantling them, luckily they were built in a shop, and assembled on site. The seat and back were mortised into the side panels, and everything was held together with wood screws, under tacked on pieces of trim. They came apart pretty easily, and I’m hoping the shorter bench I’m building goes back together just as easily.

I’d mistakenly thought the pews were 16 feet long, had a hard enough time wrestling with them at a tad over 12 feet.

This us just ONE of the seats and backs. – too bad I wasn’t putting in a new kitchen counter, these would have been great! – or made one fine trestle table.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I expected to only bring one of these home, but I was lucky enough to pick up two. The seat on the second one was split along a glue line, but otherwise everything else held together great. I’m going to mill one down into the interior trim for the front (faux oak, fiberglass door), and 4 feet of the back will become a counter in the laundry room. (I just so happen to have a salvaged oak cabinet base already in there).

The more solid of the two, when I was expecting just one, was going to become a bench for the living or dining room… turns out it is exactly long enough to also become a day bed for my daughters room.

Here’s the before picture:....

I don’t plan on working on these until after Christmas… hopefully they don’t get pushed to the back burner too long…. I’m kind of hoping that building a bed out of wood from a church will #1 protect my little girl from bad dreams and imagined harm… and #2, that it will scare her into good behavior in the coming years ;)

But until then, I’ve got (rather large) bits of church pews in the front hall, laundry, kitchen and dining rooms… (it’d be quite a challenge to fit anything down the basement stairs.) and that HAS to at least offer enough protection from any Halloweenies.

-- I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso -- http://blanchardcreative.etsy.com -- http://snbcreative.wordpress.com/