The Bench

When we moved into this house the old renters left some junk for us. Jordan was inches away from throwing this bench into the garbage but I just had to save it. Although it was covered in rust and the wood was rotted there was just something about it that I loved. Since I've been in a DIY/Crafty/Project mode recently I decided to see what I could come up with. Although it was really dirty and dangerous to sit on I really loved the charm of how weathered it looked. I wanted to try to replicate the look without having to worry about when my last tetanus shot was while sitting on the bench.

(Peanut would NOT move out of this shot)



We visited Home Depot and bought some new boards for the bench seat and back. I primed them with Kilz primer I had left over from another project. Once I removed all the old rotted wood I started sanding the chipped paint off the iron. I sanded and sanded and sanded. I wondered if it was lead based paint and I sanded. I tried to remember the symptoms of lead poisoning and I sanded. My finger nails were sharpened to itty bitty points and I sanded. I never got every bit of chipped paint off, but I wasn't going for a brand new bench look anyway.



After sanding I used Rustoleum spray paint to cover all the iron. I wanted to stay close to the original blue color, so I went with Bahama Sea by Krylon. I guess I'm used to working with regular paint because I didn't realize it would take so many coats of spraying to cover the whole bench. I ended up using 4 cans of the blue color and the blister on my trigger finger can prove it.




After the primer was completely covered and the blue paint was dry I lightly sanded the iron and the edges of the boards. The white primer shows through very subtly but it gives the weathered look I was going for. Hindsight is 20/20, now I wish I had used black primer. I had thought about it but I was worried it would be too dramatically different from the blue. Right now it's a little too clean looking, but give it a couple months in the backyard and I'm sure it will look dirty enough.