"Barn Wood" Bench and Ledge

I tackled another project recently where my aim was to eliminate a problem-area in my house.  I've thought a lot about how to tackle the problem of: Dust That Can't Be Removed From Textured Sheetrock on a Horizontal Space.  Ok, so maybe that's not the best working title but it is a real problem in my house.  Wanna see??





 

This particular area of my house is a flat area above the front entry closet.  Its surface isn't actually visible from the main floor but its dusty glory can be seem from the stairs...and it's gross.  It truly doesn't matter how often or how I clean these surfaces, the thick texture just never allows me to get deep enough to make it look clean.  And...I have more than one.  I've got this "bench" in the dining room too.

As the bench is just "slightly" more accessible, I started there.  I knew I could fix the bench by adding a cushion but since I tend to set knick knacks on the surface, a cushion just wasn't very exciting to me.  I really wanted to jump on the barn wood bandwagon so, I decided it would be my solution.  What if my barn wood gets dusty??  Who cares, it's supposed to look dirty!  Perfect!

Now to rustle up some barn wood...huh.  I've tried this before.  Craigslist is an option but not really a good one.  It's expensive and the options are pretty limited.  I live on the plains of Colorado.  We have farms, we have barns but for no good reason other than supply and demand, we just don't have a lot of barn wood being sold.  So much for saving the planet by reusing our resources.  Off to Home Depot.

At Home Depot I bought cedar fence pickets.  I made the store happy because I bought their ugliest, knottiest pickets.  They really should have given me a discount.

Next, I set out to make this wood look old.  I really like the gray look of old wood.  I decided to go cheap and make my stain by mixing vinegar and steel wool.  I grabbed a trusty mason jar since it's glass and added a piece of steel wool and poured in the vinegar.  It was not an exact science.  I guessed.  Then I sat on my hands for all of 10 minutes before I couldn't wait to give it a go.  I'm supposed to wait 24 hours you say, Pinterest?  Bah!  It might still work.

So, I grabbed a paper towel got it wet with the mixture and started wiping it on a board.  Here's what it looked like right away.  The left board (and some of the board next to it) have been wiped down.

Did it work that fast?  Sort of.  I did a few more boards and some turned gray right away; others didn't.  It really seems to depend on the type of wood.  Ok, I'll be patient.  Here are the results the following day.  I let my mixture sit for 5 hours.  The wood continued to darken as it set.  I found that the lighter parts of the wood, known as the sapwood, didn't take the stain very well, if at all.  In the future, I'll make sure to look for fence posts with little or no sap wood.

The knots darken more than the rest of the wood which I love.  Sometimes a little sanding brings out the grain if you've got that going on.  I then added some turquoise paint to a few of the boards and a little mahogany gel stain to parts of the others.  You really can't go wrong.  Just keep playing til you like what you've got.  As you can see some are wider than others in an attempt to look like I picked from a couple of barns.

I used a miter saw to cut my pieces.  I needed them to be 10.75" long.  I love the barn wood-distressed vibe but I recognize that some people don't.  So, I decided I didn't want my barn wood to be permanent.  I grabbed a piece of scrap bead board laying around and cut it roughly to the size of my bench.  Next, I layed-out my cut barn wood and arranged them until I liked the order they were in.  I truly thought I would need to cut the piece on each end to be narrower in order for it all to fit.  Guess I'm living right, because they were the perfect width for my bench.  No adjustments necessary.  Here they are all layed-out and glued on to the bead board using liquid nails.

Now, for the front trim piece.  I decided to cut the ends of my trim piece at a 45 degree angle rather than 90 degrees.  I just thought it gave the trim a more finished look and we won't hurt ourselves if we run into it.  I gave a it a bit of paint and got out the nail gun.

Tada!!  After a little touch-up on the nail holes, I have a finished bench.

A few days later I finished up the area above the hall closet.  Here it is with a before pic to help you remember.

Organization, here I come!

I really like my house but I do not like the layout of my house as you enter from the garage.  You must go through the VERY small laundry room and then straight into the kitchen.  There is absolutely nowhere to put coats, gloves, shoes, hats, and purses.  They typically get thrown on the backs of the kitchen chairs rather than walked through the kitchen, down the hallway, past the dining room to the front closet.  Which, by the way, has hangers my girls can't reach.  Hmmm, whose fault is all the mess?  Okay, mine.  So, thanks to Pinterest, I have a new plan.  There is a small corner (18x36) of the kitchen that just isn't used.  Once upon a time, it was the place we stashed the high chair, but those days are gone.

So, here's what I did.  I bought this bench from Target ($59.99)
and two of these stackable cube things, also from Target ($24.98 each).

Then I purchased a panel of white beadboard from Lowes or Home Depot, turquoise cube baskets from Lowes, a 12x36 shelf board, trim, hooks, fabric and two bookends that I mistook for (cheap) corbels.  Here's the end result!

The first step was to assemble the items from Target.  I knew I wanted the bench to sit against the wall but my baseboard was keeping the bench about 3/4" away from the wall.  So, I did some retro-fitting.  Essentially I moved the back panel of the bench toward the front of the bench by about an inch.  This allowed me to cut out a small section of the sides where they were touching the baseboard.  Voila!  The bench would now sit against the wall without having to remove baseboard!  Here's a pic, in case that didn't make sense.

Next, I knew I wanted beadboard on the side of the shelving (see first picture) but the screws holding the shelves would be in the way.  So, when assembling the shelving, I made sure to countersink my screw holes before putting in the screws.  Ok, so that's not true.  First, I assembled the shelves, then, realized my mistake
(thanks, dad) and then, I removed the screws and countersunk (countersank?) my screw holes.  In case you've never done any countersinking, it's just a drill bit that makes your hole a little bigger so that the screw head can sit down in the wood and, therefore, be flush when screwed into place.


You may have noticed that the shelf from Target came with a cushion.  The cushion was a blah-tan and too big since I was eliminating some of the seat for the shelving.  What to do?  Hack up the cushion, of course.  The cover has a zipper so the blah-tan came off easily.  I used a serrated knife to cut down the foam inside to the new, proper size.  I used some cotton fabric left over from a valance project and white piping to sew up a new cover.   In case you need some instruction, like me, I used this DIY from thecsiproject.com.

I painted the beadboard white (yes it was white to start with but it always looks scuffed straight from the store) and my dad and I cut it to fit on the wall and left side of the shelving.  It's glued (Liquid Nails) onto the shelving unit and screwed into studs on the wall.  The screws holding it to the wall are behind the shelving unit and under the white board on which the hooks are attached.  I hid the screw holding up the white hook-board by placing a hook over the screw. Yes, the board covers a screw and is held up by a screw covered by a hook.  Just keep putting stuff up til it's all covered up, got it?

The shelf is a simple 12x36 shelf board from Lowes painted white.  It rests on my corbel (aka bookend) on the right side.  The corbel is nailed into the stud on that side.  The corbel on the left is just decorative, fulfilling my need for symmetry.  Essentially, it's nailed to the shelf.  When I say nailed, I mean nailgunned.

The last step was the trim work.  I am lucky to have a retired Industrial Arts (Shop) teacher for a father.  Not just any shop teacher but a shop teacher with ALL his fingers.  Yep, he's good.  He took care of the trim work for me.  We (he) trimmed the edge of the top shelf and trimmed the front edge of the left side of the shelving unit to hide the ugly edge of the bead board.

I love it and without inspiration from Pinterest (My Mudroom Pinterest Board) and my dad, it would never have to come together!

Thanks for stopping by.  Hopefully, you got some inspiration for a small corner of your room!

Better Late Than Never?

I've really enjoyed reading the blogs of my friends and family.  Getting information about their little ones, vacations, and general goings-on has allowed me to feel more a part of their lives even when I can't be there in person.  So, in that spirit I'm starting a blog.  Our girls, Atley and Caris, seem to change and grow so much in just a week that I'm sure I could post something everyday.  That said, the girls and I also enjoy getting out of the house and running around town, so I probably won't actually post that often. 

This has been a crazy few days with lots of time in the car, under the sun, and without naps.  We started the madness by going to my niece's birthday party and my nephew's baseball game on Saturday.

On Sunday Gam, Gap (my parents), Caris, and I went to a Motocross race in Denver.  My cousin's son, Justin Bogle, is an excellent rider.  Unfortunately, since he lives in Oklahoma and rarely races in our area we only get to see him ride occasionally.  We enjoyed watching him win (all of his races) with style.

On Monday I met two of my college girlfriends and their kiddos at the zoo for a little bit of birthday fun (mine).  Since Carolyn is a professional photographer, I left my camera at home and let the her do some amazing work.   Hard not to say, "ahhh" when looking at this pic, huh?

We rounded out the last two days by hitting the pool Tuesday afternoon and going to Atley's first movie theatre-movie on Wednesday.  Needless to say, we're staying home today.  Between the whining, crying, tantrum throwing, and general bad mood, I'm pretty sure nap time is a must today.  Oh, Atley and Caris have been a little cranky too.