Banished Chairs Into a Bench

I had two chairs that had been in my dining room that were in bad shape (read rickety and dog-chewed). They were finally replaced in the room makeover. When I took them to the garage my husband banished them from returning back inside. BUT, that didn't mean I couldn't use them to make something else and/or use them outside on our deck. I remembered seeing ideas for making a bench out of chairs when I was searching for tips on creating an upholstered bench. So, I went back to the Web and did some digging. An Oregon Cottage had really great step-by-step directions for making a bench with a solid wood seat and cushion. I had pressure treated wood that I wanted to use for a more traditional slatted bench so I combined the ideas for a slatted bench from two chairs on My Repurposed Life with the other diy style to create my own bench.

Here is the starting chair.




Unfortunately I don't have pics of every step.
But I removed all but the back and rear legs of the two chairs using a bow saw.





Then I attached the chairs together with three pieces of wood, two on the outside and one on the inside. I used a circular saw to cut my wood (a first use of this power tool). Next, I used a piece of wood attached to the legs of each chair to make a scaffold for a bottom shelf.

Then I used plywood to create a base for attaching the slats, and I screwed them into place using 4 inch wood screws.

Now that the hard stuff was done, I was ready for the fun stuff - painting. The color inspiration was our outdoor dishes set and a coffee table that I painted to coordinate with the dishes. I picked Fallen Leaves by Behr as the primary color and paired it with a creamy white for the bench.

I found a floral pattern similar to the one on our dishes online and printed out a few copies to use for decoupaging on the shelf portion of the bench to add some color. I used Modge Podge to attach the paper cut-outs. Lastly, I coated the bench with polyacrylic.

I put the bench and coffee table on the deck. They look great set with the outdoor dishes. I can't wait to have company for dining al fresco.


Thanks to my son who was my helper in the drilling and holding and removal of the many stripped screws in this project.