Modified Spa Bench

Submitted by michellek on Sat, 04/02/2011 - 22:01

This is my first build ever...except for a rad cd rack I built in 8th grade shop class.  My husband and I team-worked it as a date in his dad's garage. 

So it all started when my amazingly crafty friend Lee built a toy kitchen for her kids.  I was so impressed and started looking up other people's diy kitchens.  So then I was searching for something totally different and saw the play kitchen on Ana's website (love it), and I got totally addicted and decided I was going to build a dining room table, because we have been using a hand-me-down brown card table and chairs from the 70's since we got married.  (How's that for a run-on sentence?)  I wasn't sure if my husband would take me very seriously, but after I showed him this website, I started noticing him on it all the time.  He's more addicted than I am! 

Fast forward some time and we decided to start with the spa bench as a warm-up.  Once we are in a house with our own garage (God willing in the next few months), we plan on tackling the Farmhouse Table.  Anyway, when we took the kids to Gma and Gpa's, my father-in-law got really excited that there were going to be carpenters in the family, and he took us out to the garage to show us all his tools that we could use. 

We had to buy all of the wood, screws, sand paper, stain, polyurethane, and a paint brush since it was our first project, so it ended up costing about $85.  At least now we have a lot of supplies left over for our future projects!  We had Home Depot make the cuts for us so that we could fit the wood in our car.  We used 1x4s instead of 1x3s because we didn't know that 1x3s were furring strips and not in the same place, but now we know.  :)  We also bought one warped board, which was a total pain.  Don't do that. 

This is probably a weekend project if you count the staining and finisher.  The actual building part only took us three or four hours (please don't laugh at us if that's painfully slow), but we actually took about two weeks to finish it because we have rain, no garage, and three kids under 19 months.  And we weren't really in a hurry.  Anyway, it was fun.  We like to build.  Thanks, Ana, for inspiring us and for making it doable for so many people!  We think you're neat.

Built from Plan(s)
Estimated Cost
$20-$85
Estimated Time Investment
Weekend Project (10-20 Hours)
Finish Used
We used one coat of Jacobean 2750 Minwax Wood Finish for the stain and then two coats of Minwax Fast-Drying Polyurethane (clear satin).
Recommended Skill Level
Starter Project