A gorgeous mudroom bench for $3

Turning our tiny useless room into a mudroom and opening it up into the living room was a real stroke of space-maximizing genius, if you ask me. However, with only one small closet, the room was really dying for more storage so that all coats, boots, skis, snowshoes, tote bags, mittens, hats, mail, etc., etc, don't inevitably migrate throughout the house, dragging dirt and snow with them as they clutter other rooms. So that's why when I saw plans for how to build a mudroom bench in This Old House magazine, I knew it was our destiny to make it so.

Here's the inspiration shot:

Of course, we needed to make a few modifications. Let's start at the beginning. Here's a before picture of Gabe and my old man, taken the last time he came over to help install the chimney.

Note the tall, skinny radiator - it was set away from the wall and only the first three fins would ever heat up.  We realized that that would be the perfect spot to build a bench,  but of course that radiator would have to go. Then one day, my righteous brother Andy, who works for a large construction company and thus has access to a lot of really great stuff that people would otherwise throw away, said hey Jessie, do you need any radiators?  So I said, yeah, we're looking for a nice low one that we can build a bench over. He replied, well whaddya know.  I've got just the thing.

He brought it over during our family post-Christmas celebration, and while I was preparing dinner for 18, he and Gabe scoured the house for necessary materials to install the radiator.  Miraculously, they found everything they needed, including some new brass fittings that were just sitting around.  Not bad for a project done around 8 p.m. on a Saturday night.  It was meant to be.

Much better!  Now we build.  We go to the basement to do a materials assessment.  We need a frame, a bench, a shelf, some beadboard, and some sort of solution for the empty space between the right side of the radiator and the wall.  Not to mention some hooks.

To build the frame around the radiator, Gabe found a heavy-duty old door jamb from a previous wall-tearing-down project.  Because it's the exact same southern pine and finish as everything else, the bench already begins to look at home. Not to mention rugged.

A very ornate radiator - not bad for free.

To fill in the space to the right of the radiator, I came up with the idea of using a door from the upper row of the kitchen cabinets that came down when the wall between the kitchen and dining room disappeared. The dowels - those were what cost $3.

Moving on...the This Old House plans called for plywood beadboard, but we happened to have a stash of the real thing. We took it out the old entryway-turned-pantry back in '09 and put up drywall instead. It's not that old, but it's now recycled. Here are Gabe and my dad wrestling the mostly warped boards into place. We cut out the best parts and burned the unsalvagable parts in our new/old woodstove - the terrifyingly overstuffed basement is emptying out fast! They're framed in more pieces from door jambs, mitered and routed to an elegant edge.

Yes, they're wearing matching shirts.

Lookin' good so far! Now we need a bench...it's tough to get 16" wide solid pine these days...unless you have an all-access pass to our basement. We selected the best of the three slabs we've got that fit that description. They used to be shelves, and now one of them has a higher purpose.  

We added a top shelf - from a different set of pine shelves in the basement that happened to be cut to the exact right dimension - and Dad routed out a molding for the shelf from another door jamb. We also cut a board to screw the hooks into out of a piece of baseboard removed from one of our now non-existent walls. I cleaned up a collection of really, really old hooks with a little WD-40 and my very own toothbrush. Then I sorted out a can of ancient flat-head screws I've been saving just for an occasion such as this.

Of course, the bench flips up - attached by vintage brass hinges from one of the doors we took out - to get easy access to the radiator or grab something out of the storage compartment.  Even the plywood divider came from the basement and only needed to be trimmed by less than an inch.  That might be a great dog food storage spot someday.

What are those dowels for, you ask?  Well, they're for drying your insane collection of hats and mittens that your mother and aunts keep making for you!

Yes, that's a polar-bear shaped pom-pom on the polar bear hat.  It even has blue eyes.

And now...the complete final product!

Shazaam!

Is that one heck of a $3 bench or WHAT? Now the question is what to do about the finish. It looks decent from afar and I actually kind of like the contrasting light and dark woods. However, up close, there are at least 3 different shades of stain on the woods, plus light yellow paint on the bench, light blue paint on the shelf molding, and the dowels and beadboard are just plain naked.  The beadboard, shelf, and bench are a little bit knotty, but the rest is totally clear. As my forester father pointed out, there are at least four species of pine represented. No other woodwork in the house is painted, but that would be the easiest thing to do. I think I'll take the rest of the winter to think about it. What would you do?

While we were waiting for the glue to dry on the shelf molding, we built a whole different project.  I'll save that one for next time!