Once upon a time…

I decided to build a bench from scratch, with zero experience about upholstery and furniture building. Never one to ignore a good challenge, I thought this would be a fun project to complete for this fourth week of the One Room Challenge. The weather had slightly different plans for me, so unfortunately this post is still just the plan of how I’ll be building it this next week (hopefully tomorrow on Memorial Day), but I’ll come back and update it with the full story once I’m done!

Need to catch up? Here are jump links to the previous 3 weeks of activity and planning….

Week 1 : Introducing The Boot Room - Befores, Challenges, The Plan

Week 2 : Let’s Get Colourful - Moodboard & Renderings

Week 3: Lights & Rugs & Fabrics, Oh My! - A guide to my decision process

So I began this little endeavour with the idea that this would be simple, I would just put a plywood frame atop my lovely antique legs, add some cushioning and fabric, and voila! (Right?!) But “this will be simple” are famous last words… especially out of my mouth! I found this bench design on the Fermoie website as I was browsing their fabric collection. You may remember from my last post that this pattern in particular called “Rabanna” was one of my top favorites until I received the underwhelming sample. Nevertheless, I decided this design was THE ONE for the boot room after much deliberation and that it was totally something I could build myself. Now, usually when I teach myself to build something, I have lots of examples to look into or a physical item that I’ve been able to take apart and put back together before to understand how it works and all the details. But for this, all I have is this image, my imagination and my (currently) limited skills.

But then as I was going down a rabbit hole about building a bed headboard (for another project and room we’ll get back to)… I discovered the wonders of Facelift Interiors on YouTube. A down-to-earth, no fuss, British guy called Neil who breaks down upholstery tips, tricks and methods in really easy-to-follow videos. I was hooked! But I also learned just how intricate proper upholstery was, all the extra tools and supplies I would need, and just how faffy this was all going to be. Who can see where this is going….?! :)

Of course, it turned into a completely revised plan! I use Sketchup to help me visualise, as there are two factors in this that mean I don’t want to be rebuilding anything. First of all, I’m using only scrap wood from previous projects. This does include oak and maple from our kitchen/laundry projects, but still the amounts are extremely finite. The goal was not to buy any more wood for this. Secondly, because I have stupidly decided to buy a rather nice fabric to use on my first ever upholstery project, so I need this to go well and be fully thought through. So I give you… the SketchUp skeletal version of the bench build! I’ve already cut the wood for 90% of this, but just need to get a table saw outside to cut a few remaining pieces. Read on for more details about how I planned this and why…!

Beginning at the Bottom : Leg Support

You may recall I found these 18th century oak legs on Etsy nearly a year ago now, and after saving them, revisiting them, and waiting 4 months to decide I truly couldn’t live without them - I bought them, having no idea what I was going to use them for yet. The heart wants what the heart wants. A year later, I’ve learned they’re incredibly rare and benches/chairs with these style legs in tact can sell for up to $3000 on Chairish! I’ll take my $200 leg purchase, thank you!

I knew that I didn’t want to add a bar between the two legs for added support because my woodworking skills are not up to mortise and tenon levels yet which is the only proper way to add reclaimed wood to these, and I wanted to leave them as unadulterated and beautiful as they. But also I ideally wanted open space under the bench, unencumbered by a middle support bar at the bottom. This open space means I can build a separate little roll out where we can shove our every day shoes. God knows the kids aren’t going to put them away in the shoe shelf cupboard every day and neither is my husband… And let’s face it, I can’t be bothered some days either!

So I needed a strong base support for the platform above the legs that would provide enough support for a 50” span and up to 400lbs in weight (assuming two adults and some stuff). Cue the leftover oak from our kitchen shelf project which would be strong enough to do just that as long as I put in extra support bars every 12” for reinforcement. My dimensional height of the base support frame was factored by the wood I had left over and needing to rip down a 3 ¼” piece into two to maximise usage and accounting for the height of the antique legs plus upholstery foam, Dacron batting and fabric that would sit on top of it.

Ultimately, I’ve landed with a simple 1.5” high, 1” thick oak surround and support bars, which will then have a ½” piece of plywood sitting within the frame. I wanted something more around 3” for aesthetic purposes of the fabric and bench style, but ultimately the current legs dictate that as I’m not modifying them and you don’t want the full height of the bench to be more than 18-20” for comfort reasons when sitting. Plus, we didn’t want it too high for the kids of course.

Take It Back Now Ya’ll : Back Support

Initially, I planned to build with just straight sheets of plywood, but had a few aha moments as I watched those FaceLift Interiors videos that led me down my usual “lets make this more challenging” and completely over-engineer it path!

Anything with an upholstered back – chairs, sofas, benches etc are angled. It is slight but it’s there. So that after you add foam, batting, etc, when you sit on the seat, you’re either at a slight recline like a sofa, or you’re at a 90’ angle like you’d want on a bench or dining chair. I’ve not built something with serious angles before, so this will be fun! From what I can research, most chair angles are between 10-20 degrees. I opted for 12 degrees for this build so it would be ever so slight.

As I was watching the upholstery videos, I realised that chairs don’t just have planks of wood in the back, they have a wood frame, with webbing stretched across them, and some even have springs. The reason being is that you need gaps in your rails and stiles of wood in order to be able to stretch fabric around the wood posts to the underneath and back of the chair. Mind-blowing at the time of watching, but of course makes total sense. So some 2.5” jute webbing was added to the Amazon cart and back to the planning board I went to tweak the adjust the design for webbing and the angle.

3) As I was building this SketchUp and the whole reason I do a model to begin with, is to prevent stupid mistakes as I go. This model still isn’t correct, as it shows the bottom rail of my back support sitting on the plywood seat, when in reality I actually need that rail to sit about 1” off of the plywood and my side support stiles to be longer in order to give me a gap for all the cushioning and fabric pulling. I’ll fix this as I build. Likewise, my side rails will also need to sit slightly in from my arm edges too for the same reason.

The Arms

Very similar to back support, I needed to create a gap in the bottom to run fabric through and under the bottom for securing, but I still need the full arm to be attached in enough places

In terms of construction – though I wanted the whole bench to be made out of wood, I realised I didn’t have enough scraps, and plywood would actually make this work better and be more secure. So I’ll be jigsawing the shape out of a ¾” piece of plywood, then tracing that shape to two more ¼” pieces of plywood to sandwich each side of the ¾” piece. The reason being is having that extra ¼” canal around the arm means I can wedge some corded trim in and keep it consistent, rather than relying on a good eye to keep the same line with the foam and batting. Having watched upholstery videos of how pros make headboards, this is where I got the idea.

The arms will also sit back from the front by about 2”, allowing the foam and fabric to glide around the arm down to the outside of the bench giving it a more custom feel.

This SketchUp has the arm looking very skinny which I don’t like and the current model would have my corded trim getting lost in the back cushion. No Bueno! So I’ll be beefing that up a bit in both height (from 6” to 9”) and depth (the back section will come out by 6”). I’ll also be deepening the exterior canal section to about 2” as well to be able to take the foam and fabric on top.

So there’s the plan! My goal was that this post would actually show the skeletal construction and completion of everything I’m only demonstrating in SketchUp right now so that you could see it in real-life. But unfortunately a week of rain meant time on my table saw was limited and I didn’t get through the last pieces. Nevertheless, I’ll be constructing it first thing this week (possibly tomorrow if the rain holds off!) and will update this post or add an interim one to follow up on how it goes. As always lots of details will be shared in stories as I go along. See you then!