Recently, I thought I needed more outdoor furniture. I found some plans online to build a Cedar Bench. These were not very good plans, so I had to adlib in several places. Despite that, the bench turn out fairly well.
The plans call for making the legs of the bench out of 4×4’s, the arms and braces out of 2×4’s and the bench slats out of 1×4 or 1×6, whichever you can find. After cutting out the materials list, I built the frame. I added a few braces that were not in the plans.
Next, I built the seat and back slats. Everything is attached with exterior woodscrews. Once the slats are connected, you have to round off the back slats from edge to edge so the back of the bench has a slight curve to it. I just used a jib saw to do that, it work out great.
A while back I decided that I was going to with build outdoor projects out of Cedar or Redwood and not do any finish, or I was going to paint them. I got tired to trying to stain stuff every year, the paint lasts longer. I made a mistake though using Cedar for this. Cedar is just too dry and brittle. In my opinion it does not paint well. If I had this to do over again, I would just use construction lumber, prime and paint it. I think that would work better.
The bench sits on the side of our house. It works great, even though it seems I have to spray paint parts of it every year. Here are some photos of the project.
Doug
