DIY: Upholstered bench

We moved to our first house on 1st January 2012. It was new year's day... So, when other people went out to movies, picnics etc. we spent the whole day, shifting our things to our new home.. At the time we moved in, the house was still not in good condition. The wall was not yet painted, wiring was still going on, there was no kitchen etc. We ended up having dinner outside for about a month, until all the major renovations completed. 

Our first DIY project was to make an upholstered bench for living room. There was an empty space in our living room that I kept thinking what kind of furniture that fit in there. So, one day, during our journey to find a tv cabinet (it was a long and tiring journey), I saw this kind of simple bench that costs RM250 (about USD80), which I thought very expensive for that simple design. The bench looked almost like this.

While my husband looked around for a tv cabinet, I studied the bench design, tried to register into my brain, and thought I could use some spare woods from kitchen cabinet project.

We went back home.. I told my husband about it, he said, ok and then blah..blah about other things. Hurmm, as usual he didn’t really anticipate to what I was talking about. I started with designing the bench (huhu, like a real pro… ;-) ) … It was only a sketch. I showed it to my husband and asked him to help me cutting the wood. And then he was like, uh, ok… I waited for about a week for him to cut the wood. So, on Monday, I came back from the lab and got the courage to cut it on my own. I was able to cut 3 pieces of 1” thick x 2” width wood for 2’ long (uughh, that was hard). I showed to him when he came back from work later, he was like “Ok, I’ll help you tomorrow to cut the rest”. But, he didn’t. So, on Friday I urged him to help me (he was on leave that day) cut the wood and immediately assembled it. This was the look .. :-p it didn’t look nice, right?

During our "journey" searching for tv cabinet, my husband learnt about hi-gloss painting. Thanks to the chinese owner of a furniture store. He was really kind to give us a lesson about furniture painting and lamination. Suddenly, my husband became really enthusiatic to beautify my bench. He did some research and stumbled into some high gloss painting techniques on the websites. He didn’t wait any longer, and went to the hardware store the next day. He purchased two types of paint; hi gloss paint and undercoat paint, a wood filler and a plastic scraper (I guess it came with the filler).

Next weekend, early in the morning, he started polishing the bench with sandpaper. He used a sandpaper modified to fit the grinder and easily polished the surface. There were many nail holes on the surface, he filled it with wood filler, dried it up for half an hour and polished it again with hand-sanding. He repeated this for 2 times.

After that he painted the bench with undercoat and dried it under direct sun for 30 minutes and sanded it again. He repeated it two times (supposed need to repeat few more times, but he couldn't wait to see the finished result). 

Lastly, he painted with high gloss paint and this was what it looked like after drying.

This was our first DIY together (even though, he seemed not interested in the beginning, I appreciate him for helping me went through that tough job; sawing! ;-)). 

So, next step was upholstering that bench. I don't have the finished picture now (have to disciple myself to hold camera all the time, sigh!). Will upload it in next posting.

Have a nice day!!

*Sorry for the low quality pictures. I used my handphone camera to take the pictures. Need to snap using my DSLR.