making a bench

My kitchen chairs have had it.  I have repaired them and repaired them again but when you have a lot of traffic in your house you move a couple of times and your chairs are made in China they just aren't going to last.  So I looked online for new chairs.  Do you know how much chairs cost? Its crazy like $150 per chair, so I decided to make myself a bench.  It works better for our space and I can put 5 kids on it where as my chairs only fit 3.  I stole the fancy legs off my 3 broken chairs for the legs of my bench.

1st step was to measure the space under my table to see how long my bench could be.  I made a very simple frame for my bench, however I realized that I had made it too wide in the beginning because I didn't take into account I wanted the top of the bench to hang over the frame.  Silly mistake but easy to fix.  All  the tools I needed for this project were a drill with drill bit and screw bit, a clamp, and I used my trust miter saw.  This made all the difference in the world.  you could use a regular saw but it would take a lot longer. I also borrowed a router for the edge of my top. This step is not necessary but made it look very nice and I didn't have that sharp edge.  Materials were 3 pieces of 1x2x8 ft pine boards they were less than 2 bucks at home depot.  I also bought a pine slab for the top.  This I bought a little higher grade because I wanted to to look nice. some wood glue and screws as well. 

The hardest part was getting the 45 degree angle piece cut that the legs bolts into.  I took me a couple of tries to get them just right.  I kept forgetting that once I drew my line I had to adjust my wood on the miter saw 1/8th of an inch because of the blade.  After more tries than I am willing to admit I got them all cut to the proper size.  

not polyurethaned yet

revised narrower bench

I first glued and screwed my frame together minus the short end pieces. THen I layed my frame on my sheet of pine (the actual seat)  I counter-sinked my holes then screwed the frame directly onto my seat. After that I set my legs in place to mark the holes for the angled piece.  After a couple of attempts to get itjust right I finally glued and clamped the piece in place then when it was dry I screwed it into the wood THEN drilled the holes for the bolts.  After everything was sanded smooth I sprayed my base black to match my table.

One of the more difficult parts was getting my bench stain to match my table.  I refinished my table some time ago and I had that stain left over but I was using different wood for my bench so it took a bit of mixing sanding and mixing again to get it close enough to match.  It's not a perfect match but close enough for me.  Once I was finally happy with the color I made sure to polyurethane it.  On pieces like this that I know are going to get a lot of use I like to seal them with a separate sealer/polyurethane so I can give it a few extra coats.  I know they make stain with this built right in but for this project I wanted it to match as well as hold up to what my boys dish out.

I am pretty happy with my end result although next time I will spread my base out a little wider.  I feel like its too narrow and has the possibility to tip when the boys rock on it.

 Now what to do with the left over chairs?