Happy birthday!!!

Holy shat, it's been a long dry spell for posts!  Nearly 6 weeks?  Something like that.  Here it is, Boxing Day already!  Christmas was good at our house.  Or maybe Festivus?  Whatever the nonreligious version is, heathens that we are.  Io, Saturnalia?  Happy first day of Kwanzaa!  I should find some libations and celebrate.



Anyhow!  I'm skipping the finished nightstand post right now, because we spent a few weeks without the camera so I have no pics of it in place.  I'll get to that post soon, seriously.  This post is the 'holy crap, I have something like 14 days till a good friend's birthday and I have NO idea wtf to get her!' combined with the staying-up-too-late-browsing-Ana's-plans combined with a healthy dose of 'Quigs has WAY better style than I do, and our tastes don't run the same for most things but I can totally see where she's coming from'.  Also, she loves turquoise and red.  And cubbies..and benches..and storage.  Do you see where this is going?

I ran across this plan and was immediately in the garage looking over my wood stash.  It calls for 14 feet of 1x12, which I had in the form of that plywood I had Orange cut into 11.5" strips 8 feet long!  So all I needed was wheels, trim, and finishing supplies.  As a mom of a 3 year old who has a rolling crate cart I cannot imagine putting into his hands a 4' wheeled cubby bench as well..Quigs has a 4 year old and a 3 year old.  Wheels were a no go, IMO.  I found SUPER cute bun feet at one of the big stores for fairly cheap (even cheaper online just googling around but I wanted them NOW!).  Already sanded and ready for staining or primer & paint.  Love them!

So, my poor Husbeast...he's so great about the building process.  I think it helps that it's now fully COLD out so I can't really spend all day out there...I did a lot of my pre-work indoors or in quick bursts in the garage.  I did all of the finishing, minus sanding, indoors.  Which is another kudos to the Husbeast...the build was quick.  The finishing was FOREVER.  The bench basically lived on our kitchen table for 2 weeks.  Short trips to the garage for sanding, then back inside for more woodfiller and critical eye.

Pre-finishing pics -

Basic structure is done.  It's square, but ugh, I still suck at things.  You can totally tell (in person) that this is only my 4th or 5th item!  But, I'm trying not to get too down about it.  The plywood was a great savings idea, but ugh...not a great TIME saver.  It's very sturdy, but some of the joins aren't the best they could be.  Bun feet are sitting on top, as you can see.  So cute!  They're 2x3.5" and come with a screw/bolt/whatever already inserted.  Just predrill the hole and screw in.

I had clamped on some scrap 1x2 to mimic the finishing pieces and put a bun foot under the corner just to see how it was going to look,.  Loved it!

Trim pieces added, no feet yet.  I needed to get those primed/painted/poly'd before installing them.

Finishing the plywood was a farking nightmare of epic proportions.  At one point I bought a TUB of wood filler and was applying it with a trowel.  I shall never use that particular plywood for a visible wood piece ever again!  Lesson definitely learned. 

Sooooo, 2 coats of primer, 4 coats of Valspar's Quite Red on the feet & inside cubbies, 2 coats of Valspar's 'Exotic Sea' (which is funny in itself...I'm not a turq-whore like Quigs is..so I had NO clue what 'version' she preferred...the greenie?  the blueie?  No clue...We were due for a playdate at my house when she mentioned she'd had her husband spray paint some items around the house to her fav turquoise...so I lied my ass off the day before the playdate and said 'oh gosh, I have too much going on and projects drying everywhere...can we play at your place?' just so I could get a gander at the turq...She had mentioned it was a Valspar spray paint so when I got home from the date I just went on Valspar's site and looked at all the spray paint till I found the one...which you can buy in cans!) (Sorry for lying, Quigs...but it was for a good cause!).

The day after her birthday she came over and I had wrapped up the rest of the paint for her..claiming I spent 3$ on her present but I got it used..She was actually really excited by 3/5ths of a can of her fav colour ;)  How sweet is that?  But then it was like something out of HGTV or something cause I made her come around the corner and see what I had DONE with the paint..She was all squee and it was super fun.  I had to laugh a few days ago because I remembered out of all this squee'ing and craziness she suddenly went 'but what about YOUR bench?!'...Like I was ever building this for me!

Admire the tiny bow garnish -

I'm still torn on how the colours turned out.  I had tossed around all turquoise with red feet...all turquoise, red feet, red stencil on seat..Stained turquoise and stained red, with distressing..I finally ended up here.


And here it is, finally in place (I kept it till the poly was done and cured...but then Christmas happened...so I finally delivered it today.  10 days after her bday.  9 days after I 'gave' it to her.)

I knew she'd find some seriously kickass bins for it!  I love them!