I Love Lamp: Barnwood Benches

Yesterday afternoon Steven and I were feeling a little trapped and listless. It's been cold, cold, cold for months, months, months and while there's still lots to be done for the Inn and one can always work on a new book idea, we both found ourselves in a bit of a "hurry up and wait" place. We've learned that when our to-do lists have become too amorphous and intangible, it's good to get our hands dirty. Literally. So as the contractors packed up their gear for the day, we decided to take ours out and into the barn to MAKE something.

A few weeks ago Steven made a bench out of some old barnwood and 2x4s for our entranceway:

I've been trying to settle upon a design for benches in the Inn's rooms, and while I love this one, the top is one of a kind so we had to come up with something else.

When it comes to making stuff for the rooms-- for the house even-- the name of the game is "What can we cannibalize from our house/barn/yard?" aka "What's FREE?" We've made shelves out of barnwood and L brackets from the old laundry room for our bar--

We built our dining room table from barnwood and 2x4's--

Hell, we even dragged the barn door into the kitchen!

After sketching out different models involving all sorts of cuts and supports we decided upon something laughably simple: barn wood + two stumps + 4 screws. And presto!

The actual construction took maybe ten minutes, but sitting by our fire with our feet propped up on it and some beers in our hands, we felt like it was the real pride of the day's work.