Upcycled Dining Bench

An upcycled dining bench with legs from an old end table!

We finally made another dining bench!

The first dining bench we made last year was awesome, but it was a little narrow for sitting.  We planned on making another dining bench, but life got in the way.

Well, the time finally came to build another bench!

This dining bench is upcycled from an old end table we picked up at a garage sale last year.  The legs were cool, but the top of the end table was a little rough.  Instead of refinishing it, we just decided to use the legs to create a dining bench!



The heights of an end table & a dining bench are different, so we ended up cutting the legs down a little bit.  You’ll see more pictures of that in my upcoming post about painting the dining bench.  I wanted to mention it because the dining bench looks super tall here & that’s why.

Now, let’s talk about how we made this bench!

We started by taking off the top of the end table.

Once the table top was off, we made our measurements for what we wanted for the bench.  We measured the bench to fit under our existing kitchen table.  We also made sure to make it a little wider this time so it will be comfortable & won’t tip back when you’re sitting on it!

We bought some supplies a while ago when we thought we were going to make a dining bench from scratch, so we used those.  For around the legs, we used nicer pine boards.  We cut those to fit our bench frame & put them on using the existing hardware.  We even reused the same screws!

To make it easier, we took the bench apart one side at a time, starting with the smaller sides.  We even put the top back on for extra support!

Once the new sides were on, we took the old front/back pieces off & put our new boards on.

Once the new frame was built, it was time for the dining bench seat!

We used stair treads for the bench seat.  We like using stair treads because they’re super thick boards.  For this project, we ended up cutting the stair treads down into strips using the table saw.  Then we used the planer to get them extra smooth/even around the edges.

Then, it was time for painting!  We held off on installing the bench seat until I painted the base.  I wanted to stain the seat in place & age it a bit.

In my next post, I’ll talk about how I went about aging the bench to make it look old & how I got the different types of wood on the base to match!

Overall, I’m super happy with how this bench turned out!  I think it’s my current favorite piece we’ve made!  Check out this post to see how we painted the bench!

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