I've already shared my undying love for reclaimed barnwood with you (see my barnwood artwork here and my huge barnwood frame here and our striped shore frame here), but it's about to get even more sappy. Are you ready? I adore reclaimed barn wood. I can't seem to get enough of it. It adds such character and warmth to a room or a project and, luckily for me, I have access to loads of it because my father-in-law has a barn just filled with the gorgeous stuff! That leads me to this project (and I promise I am going somewhere with all this rambling…)
This was my basement space before Monica went all Nate Berkus on it and transformed it into an awesome. comfortable, totally liveable room. As soon as I heard about the Nate Berkus Show, the wheels started turning. We thought that we were going to redesign a room in our own homes, so after I woke up from my shock-induced coma, I started thinking about how I wanted the space to look, and what projects I should attempt before we did the taping. That's where the bench comes in. I decided I wanted to build that my hubs should build a big corner bench across from the bar that would make for a great hangout spot. As you might have noticed, I roughly taped out what I thought would look good (the blue tape lines are in the bottom left hand corner of the pic), and then we made more detailed measurements.
First, we painted the entire space and got rid of the rust/orange color. Then, my hubs had his dad come out to help and together the three of us decided that the one side would be 10 feet long, 22 inches deep, and 20 inches high, and the other side would be 8 feet long with the same depth and height. (It's a BIG bench!)
So, they went about framing out the bench, making sure it had a ton of support. If we had had more time, (let's say more than 5 days! Nate likes to keep you hopping, you know?) I would have liked to incorporate some kind of storage into the bench, but alas, it was not to be. And wait, what's that on the bench? I was so impatient that I threw a couple of pillows my mom had made for me on it before anything was nailed down! I just couldn't wait!
Now we're getting to the fun stuff…I picked a few planks of barn wood out for the top of the bench- the stuff you would see when sitting on it. They started nailing it down, which included a lot of brute force and grunting (from the guys, not my poor mother-in-law who somehow got sucked into helping with this project while I happily took pictures).
Just look at all that gorgeousness! It certainly makes my heart skip a beat.
This piece especially is super cool. It's an old plank of wood that says Air Force and"handle with care", so I imagine it has some great history attached to it. I love that the pieces have some interest to them.
Finally, my hubs added drywall, painted the bench the same color as the walls, added moulding to the bottom of the bench, and sealed it with a water-based polyurethane. And now, it looks like this:
Ha! Gotcha! Did you really think I would should an AFTER picture before The Nate Show airs? Not on your life! But I can tell you this, the bench itself is absolutely beautiful and Monica worked some design magic with the stuff in Nate's Crate to make it even better.
Only 2 days until the BIG REVEAL!
Oh yeah, one more thing: to find out when The Nate Show airs in your area, click here.