Farmhouse Bench

From two counter height stools- to Farmhouse bench to match my Farmhouse table.

Seeing as now that I have a beautiful Farmhouse table in my morning room, probably the next step was to build something to sit on. I have made this bench once before from two barstools, but that one was upholstered. This one I made similarly, but wanted to completely refinish the stain on the legs and build a custom top. Similar inspiration was found for this at Ana-white.com, Here is a plan that would help with building this bench if you had to build the legs too, which I did not.

Here's what I did:

1. Grabbed the two barstools I am insistent on changing into something new and spectacular.

2. Removed the top cushion and board from the legs. This just took unscrewing the top. 

3.  I cut about 5 inches or so off of each leg, and then sanded the snot out of every.single.leg.side.and.top. side. With my orbital sander. This took forever and was very tedious. 

Here are the legs "naked". 

4. I joined both stools together with an extra cross-bar stool support I had from the previous bench I made.

See that step here:

Not sure what type of wood this was, but it was sooo hard to drill!

5. Then it was time to build the top. I used yet another 12 inch flooring plank that matched the top of my farmhouse table. Then I started to add trim around it. 1 added 1x2's "flat" for the length of the board then two end pieces also "flat". Then I added another layer of 1x2's not "flat" but perpendicular to the trim. This created two "stacks" of trim around the bench.

My son "helping" with the bench top. 

I glued the side trim and viced them together. Then screwed the trim onto the plank.

Both sets of trim seen here.

6. I then added the top to the legs with the same exact screws I took off of the leather tops. I filled in all holes on the wood top, and sanded it all to make it smooth with my orbital sander. 

7. I stained it using the same stain mix I used for my Farmhouse table. This was a mix of minwax Providence and Ebony, a 3 to 1 mix. I did about 3 coats of stain. In the end it probably could have used another coat of stain. Its ok though, it still looks "rustic" enough. 

8. I coated it with 3 coats of poly-crylic protectant. Here is the final product:

And with the table:

Hope you all enjoyed this project. Next, on to the chairs for the other side. 

Kristen