Submitted by Sharon Wells from Down At The Gate. Inspired by a clever lady called Gail from My Repurposed life blog.
I brought my kids to Kerry for their holidays to see their grandparents like I do every year. This year was a bit different we had moved house and I had started decoupaging chairs and painting other furniture, primarily for myself to put into the 1920’s house we had moved into. I knew Liz, a good friend of my sister’s and we found we had a common desire to do up old furniture. We decided to give it a go together and was amazed by the positive response that we received from friends and family and from people on facebook. I was inspired by sites such as 4 the love of Wood and My Repurposed Life. These are blogs written by women across the Atlantic Ocean who rescue broken and unwanted furniture and turn it into something new, useful and unique. This bench was inspired by a clever lady called Gail from My Repurposed life blog
On a rainy day, looking for something useful to do, I asked my Dad if we had any old beds in the shed. He produced this perfect candidate. Two ends of the top half of a bunk bed. We cut one end in half exactly. Note: Dad cut this as I can’t use a hand saw to cut a straight line!!
We clamped the cut and uncut pieces together at right angles and screwed it together. These pieces became the back of the bench and the two side arm rests. Note: bunk bed frames have dowel holes that need to be filled and the screws needed to be countersunk as these dowel holes are in exactly the same place as the screws needed to go.
We cut the finials from the front of the bench and added them to the back for better height.
Next we added the support timbers to the back of the bench, ( I cut that one a little short as I measured it from post to post instead of from inside the post to inside the post!!). It didn’t matter as we put that on the back anyway.
We fixed the front support timber a little bit back from the front edge so we could put a decorative molding on the front if we decided to.
To make the seat we cut the seat timbers approximately first and then temporarily attached them to a support so that we could saw them all at the same time and get them the same length. Again (Dad did that as again I can’t saw in a straight line, especially with a power saw!!).
We attached the seat timbers to the support timbers leaving a small gap on each end and cut pieces to fit these gaps exactly.
Now with the bench constructed I got to work on the painting. I chose Annie Sloan Provence chalk paint for all of the bench except for the seat.
I finished the bench seat with a dark stain which looks lovely with the Provence.
We had sanded the seat timbers and I love how the wood grain shows up with the stain. I really enjoyed this project. And it was fantastic because we bought nothing for it.
Here is a list of what we used : old bunk bed (unused in the shed for a few years), seat and support timbers (scrap wood in the shed), screws, panel pins, painters mate, etc (all in the shed), Annie Sloan chalk paint (leftover from another project), Dark wood stain (hiding in the back of the shed in a rusty tin). The bench is a very sturdy and pretty item which will be used and be inspiration for many more!!
