The Bench by the Door

Every summer, I attempt to find interesting projects around the house to take up my time. Of course, this year, it's getting harder with a toddler who only naps once a day. Last summer, I reboarded our deck. A few years back, I tiled the bathroom floor and put up wainscotting..some years, it's been painting..and although the projects are a bit smaller now than they used to be, I still look forward to them. The agenda for this year hopefully includes:

- powerwashing and staining the deck (because we couldn't do it last year, the wood needed to dry!)

- painting the bench on my front sidewalk

- making curtains for the bedroom

- perhaps tiling the backsplash in the kitchen with Armstrongs Metalaire tiles (have you seen these? They look like TIN! So very cool!)

- painting the bench in the kitchen

- glueing everything in need with carpenter's glue to repair...


I started with painting the bench in the kitchen. It's really just a nice garbage find. It holds all of our coats through the year and bags and stuff.



We store all our hats, mittens, gloves, and scarves inside, along with a few extraneous things, like Joe's life preserver for kayaking....but since I literally hauled it down the street several years ago on a skateboard, it has been in disrepair in one spot, a piece of the side was broken off (and I kept it all this time!) and I always felt that it would look much nicer black rather than the honey color it came to us as.



Of course, picking one of the most humid days of summer was not exactly a smart choice, but I did it! I used Martha Stewart's Francesca black from the Home Depot. It came out looking spectacular! Unfortunately, the humidity was not on my side, and a few places chipped..I suspect I'll be doing some touchups to this piece in the future. But at least for now, I'm really happy with how it came out!