DIY Headboard Bench

It's been almost a year since I decided to get rid of the broken, dusty, spider houses in front of our house.

Trees. They were plastic trees. 

And with so many real pine trees around our house already, we definitely did not need three more fake ones by our front door.

Well, after getting rid of those plastic trees, we definitely needed something to take their place. And a bench sounded like the perfect thing! And as the DIY person I am, I wanted to make one!

As you can see in the picture, this project was done about a year ago but I still wanted to share how we made it.

After searching for free headboards online and not finding a usable one close enough, we ended up finding this one in an apartment dumpster! John was kind enough to pull it out for me and we got started on it the next week!

First, I used basic measurements from our dining chairs to measure how high I wanted the sides of the bench to be and how deep I wanted the seat to be and cut the footboard into two pieces to fit that height and depth.

Next, I measured the headboard height and also cut it down to the right height for the back of the bench.

Also as a side note, John was very skeptic about how this DIY dumpster bench would turn out. Lol.

In fact, he didn't even help me with it until I started getting ready to screw it all together and he could see how it was going to turn out! Good thing he did too, because I needed some extra hands with that part!

To assemble the bench, we screwed the front base board to the arms of the bench and the arms of the bench to the headboard. Then, we screwed extra boards inside our bench base perpendicularly so they were attached to the front base board and the headboard in the back. This would create a strong base for the rest of the bench.

After that, we screwed more boards to the top for the seat.

Once that was done, I sanded. A ton. And then wiped it all down to get ready to stain it.

(Another side note... all of the wood we used was scrap wood we got free from people online or friends which made this project even more affordable)

Once our bench was fully assembled and sanded, we decided to leave it in it's natural rustic color and just coat it with a weather protectant sealant. A few coats of that stuff and our bench was done!

I'm so happy with how it turned out! And I've already been able to use it quite a bit watching our kids play in the front yard with their bikes and sidewalk chalk. Just a few outdoor pillows and our porch is hopefully much more spider free now!