Rustic Garden Bench

I’m sharing my latest project—a rustic garden bench! Y’all know I love to do easy projects as fill ins for the larger stuff I do. Designing my own projects and building from scratch is my favorite thing to do. When the weather is pretty and I’m able to be outside doing what I love, it just makes my heart sing!

So, while looking for my next “easy” project, I scrounged around in the garage, and this is what I came up with . . .

I have oodles of crib rails, and I was trying to figure out a way to use up some of the stuff I have in storage.

I gathered up one set of rails, some weathered wood, including 2×4’s and fence boards. I also dug out a couple of old porch spindles I got when one of my favorite Peddler’s Mall’s closed. I got a lot of these old spindles for $5.  That was months ago, and I haven’t used a single one. It was a chore just finding them, and trying to pry two out of the pile. You will see later that I really should have dug a couple of more out to choose from. I didn’t get the cream of the crop.

After a little measuring and designing the bench in my head, I cut some of the weathered 2×4’s to use as a skirt for the bench. I chose 4×4’s for the legs of my new rustic garden bench. My Kreg Jig was the perfect tool to quickly attach all of my pieces together.

I used my combination square to make sure all of the the boards were spaced the same as I secured my pocket hole screws.

It’s always a challenge getting to the the screws on the shorter sides. I used my right angle drill to secure those screws.

I clamped the crib rail to the back of the bench, and secured it with screws all along the back.

It’s looking a little funny—I’m not sure at this point that it’s going to come together.

This is the wood I used for the frame, legs and the seat.

I had to cut the spindles on an angle to get them to rest properly on the back and the seat.

I used my nail gun and Gorilla wood glue to secure the spindles. I used a large chip brush and some watered down white paint to do a wash over the bench, much like I did for my potting bench/outdoor entertainment center.

I set some flowers around it. I still love these planter koozies I made a couple of years ago. I like the way they hide the planters.  Have you ever seen my repurposed floor lamp into a solar light? It looks so cute lit up at night.

So, I’m not thrilled with how the bench turned out, but for an outdoor rustic garden bench, I think it fits the bill.

gail

Sharing this project at The Vintage Inspiration Party