My Little Bench Project

A number of years ago our church was giving away some very old church pews that were in the basement.   The church kept a few of the best ones, and the rest were freebies if anyone wanted them.  We took 3 of them, figuring we could at least re-purpose the wood for something else.  (We did - the long boards are supports across saw horses every spring for my seedling trays in the bay window)  For several years these pews sat in my basement, lined up like in church, in front of my piano.  Folks would always tease me about my "Backwoods Baptist Church", but they did provide some seating in the basement. 
     Then one year we got the bright idea to make a little deacon's bench by cutting down 2 of the best ones to use the end pieces that were not split up too bad, and cutting down the bench to a smaller size.    We had to re-glue and re-nail and this bench sat downstairs like this for another 2 or 3 years:

I finally got tired of looking at it that way and decided to finish the project that was just waiting for "spare time" (uh, what is that??)   Besides, I needed another seat for out on my screened in porch after I rearranged everything out there.  I took a trip to the paint department of Menards and spent an hour looking at a million paint sample cards, trying to decide what color to paint it.  Finally I decided on a color called Garden Glow Green, which I thought was very appropriate for a gardening nut like me.

Front of bench (it is actually darker than it looks in this photo)

Back of bench.

  I looked around for decals to put on it - flowers - but quickly learned such things aren't really made any more.   Everything is 'peel and stick' and big wall decals and high prices, too.   I was not going to pay almost 20 dollars for a few wall stickies!  I figured I had plenty of odds and ends of paint at home, and so I'd paint my own flowers on the finished bench.   This was a real rash decision on my part because I am NOT an artist by any means!  Oh sure, I can draw very rudimentary flowers and squiggly lines - but would it look good?  After all the trouble I went through to paint this bench, I sure didn't want to mess it up!  Well, here is the finished product.   I must say it turned out just like I hoped it would!   What do you think?

The transformed church bench!

Here's another view:

Now this bench has to dry for a couple more days before I clean up the porch and put it back out there. 
     These original church pews were very old indeed, perhaps originals from the start of our little country church.   They were hand made, and even had homemade square nails!  I like to think that whoever made these pews would be pleased that they are living on.......