Thursday, October 26, 2006

The Bench: Take 2

Well, it’s that time of year again; yes, that time of year when my wife asks for a bench and I somehow manage to build something else. See, the instructions were pretty simple this time. She asked for a bench… well, specifically, this bench. Simple enough, right? Well, apparently not.

All was going just swimmingly until one fateful night when she came out to the garage as I was working on the ‘bench’ and uttered those fateful words: “Man, this thing sure is big.” That, my politely quiet reader, was the beginning of the end. After a bit of quick checking it seems I’d completely hosed the dimensions on the desired bench. Yes, that’s right. The bench SHE wanted would fit very neatly and very precisely into the open space on my version. Indeed it was about 8 inches too tall. After the fact it was all very obvious but before the fact… well, no so.

At any rate, it now makes a pretty tidy… well, something. Not quite a window seat (unless you’re 7 foot 4) but not quite just a bookshelf. But it’s useful and was not an utter and complete waste of wood in any case. Just mostly.


Total cost of this project with wood, primer, and paint: $80.


1 comment:

Trebor Nevals said...

Heh. Thanks, though I will admit that any credit for customization goes straight to panic. Imagine this... you need a big wooden rectangle 13x48 but instead you have a big rectangle 19x48. Big rectangle takes up pretty much all available workbench space. So yeah, I had to have something to do with this thing. It's too tall to be a bench so a window seat for a giant is the only answer really. The two additional shelves were just to accommodate more shorter books (which I obviously have in plenty) and leaving those out of the center left somewhere for those stupid books that are too tall for every other shelf in the house. I'm damn happy with it. All the more because I have somewhere to put these plants. A vast improvement over the white-wire racks that used to be under this window.

Yeah, see the 8 inches boggles my mind as well. But realize I'd never actually SEEN this bit of furniture anywhere but in the catalog so it completely failed to register with me just how SHORT things you sit on are. After the fact, yeah, duh. Like I said, the INSIDE dimensions of the big bench are the OUTSIDE dimensions of the little bench. On well, live and larn.

As for plywood... yeah, I can't bring myself to use any plywood. Especially considering how cheap real, solid wood is in general.