Entryway Bench

The Entryway bench project is well underway and it's time to share some of the progress.

Our front entryway has an alcove where shoes, boots, the weekly junk flyers and the occasional snow shovel get dumped in a haphazard pile of soggy chaos.  There are hooks too...I think there's a pair of gym shoes hanging from those.

We need some proper storage to help us keep the area clean.  The bench we've decided to go with is similar in size to a piano bench.  It has a compartment at the top that will open for storage and a slotted rack on the bottom to allow wet footwear to dry.

The SketchUp drawing was psoted here: http://gswoodshop.blogspot.com/2011/08/entry-way-bench.html

There are some minor modifications to the published SketchUp drawing that are worth mentioning and I'll go back and do an update at some point.

1. The bottom shelf would have only stuck out as far as the outside edge of the legs.  The plan has been changed to make the bottom shelf as wide as the top.  They should stand about an inch proud of the legs now.
2. The mortise and tenons for the storage area are now 3/8" thick and go all the way to the top of the legs.  After hand cutting the bottom mortises I decided a router with a slot cutter would be a better approach for the top.  I'll post some pictures of that process at some point.

Ok got some wood out for a template.  Got my plans printed out.  Time for a coffee break.

Rough layout and grain matching: 3 hours.  Sawing: 15 minutes.  Redoing boards that didn't come off of the tablesaw straight and square: 0 minutes.

This is the template for the bottom shelf.  It will be used with a pattern router bit to cut the actual pieces.

These are the legs being glued together.  They are all oversized at this point so they can be trimmed to exact size.

To make the legs two strips of wood are laminated together and all four legs are ganged together in the clamps while the glue dries.

The legs were cut about a half inch too wide so the sides could be be trimmed to size on the tablesaw.  First the saw was set up to take a quarter inch from one side.  Then the saw was set to the final width of the legs and the freshly cut side was run down the fence giving nice square legs.

Now I spend the next few nights chiseling out mortises.

Cheers!