Naughton your life: "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.