Project Log: Antique Bench

Project Log:  Antique Bench

This is really my wife's project.  It was her idea and she did most of the work. She has been saying she wanted some kind of a bench in our entry hall for some time now.  She always looks for them when we are anywhere "antique-y" and we've come close to buying a few of them.  The original idea was for a church pew of some kind, and we even found a really cool bench that was made from the tail end of a 1950's Ford pickup that we were both on board with but was already sold, sadly.  

She decided we should go to Round Top, Texas, for "Antique Days" a few weeks ago - a leisurely day trip, as it was sold to me.  I had no idea about the scale of this event.  It would take weeks to see everything and it's laid out over dozens of venues in multiple towns.  We went on a Saturday and it was a madhouse. The traffic was ridiculous and we really only had time to hit a couple of stops. Branelle had no trouble finding a few options and we had wisely brought the trailer with us so she decided on an 1800's era trundle bed.  It probably wasn't the one I would have chosen, and it wasn't cheap, but she seemed to really like it so I was on board.

We lugged it home without issue and Nel went to work on it immediately.  The first step was keeping Samantha from using it as a chalkboard. 

This is how it would have worked as a trundle bed.  The front folds forward and a mattress or bedding of some kind would have been inside.  It would work...if you were under five feet tall.

After cleaning it up, Nel went to work sanding the whole thing down.  She still hadn't completely decided how she wanted to finish it but it was going to need to be sanded regardless.  

It cleaned up really nicely.  If the outside had been the same sort of tobacco shade that the inside was I would have voted to keep it like that.  The reddish tint on the outside didn't really work though.

Nel went to work painting it (and herself) with multiple coats of a non-glossy white.  It took a while but she meticulously trudged on.

Here I am jokingly telling her that we should have left it bare.  What you don't see are the objects flying at my head.

After the paint was finished she went to work distressing the bench.  It's a much more basic process than I would have thought.  You basically just sand layers away where you want to show distressed wood.  She let me help with this part.  After the scuffing she painted it with a couple layers of a clear coat.

Before

After

The original hardware had seen better days, and in fact one of the latches was broken.  I thought about going on a scavenger hunt at local antique malls but decided that nice antique-look gate hardware from Home Depot would work perfectly.

This just shows a closeup of some of the distressing details.  It's a popular look right now and pretty easy to do.

This is the hand-carved construction detail on one of the arms.  It's still pretty sturdy for a piece of wood built a couple hundred years ago.

The happy ladies with their ridiculously expensive but very nicely done antique bench.  On a plus note, the trundle bed makes a great place to store things.