Rustic Bench

This project is a rustic bench to sit underneath the screen in our theater room and hold the center speakers. I built a smaller bench, but the mass and scale are too small, and it doesn't look good next to the screen frame. We are now using the bench for an end table, and it works great there.

About five years ago, a friend of mine gave me about 500 board feet of rough miller fir. He had no use for it, and it has been sitting in my garage since then. Here one of the thicker boards...


I cut a 4' piece off the end, and planed it down with a my hand-held power planer. I removed most of the rough-saw marks, but not all of them. The wood was clean, but still rustic:



I used a skill saw cut lines in bench top as mortises for the legs., then removed the material with a hammer and chisel. I like using a brick hammer for this - I sharpened the back end, so it works like a chisel as well.


Here are the legs - same process as for the top:


Assembly was simple: poly glue the legs in the mortises, and hold them with a couple of blind 3" screws until they dried.


I stained the bench with a medium pine stain to match the other built-in furniture in the room.

Once dry, I will apply a couple of coats of acrylic sealer.

My goal was to have this bench look like it came out of a lodge somewhere, and overall I am happy with the results. This ended up bring about a three hour project (before sealing).