DIY Benches and Chairs
If you can follow a recipe, you can build DIY benches and repurpose simple furniture and up all sorts of possibilities for your indoor-outdoor décor! With the holidays approaching and large family gatherings, we curated a few interesting and unusual ideas for creating extra DIY seating for your home!
The licensed contractors at the DIY Network, who make building anything look super easy, say if you have a weekend you can build a built-in! See what you think of these DIY benches, window seats and more!
Storage Benches
Using cut pieces from 3/4-inch plywood, glue and a nail gun, this design adds hinged swing-up lids with minimal steps. It’s one DIY built-in bench that goes together (seemingly) without a hitch. For a more finished look, these DIY contractors nailed high-end wood paneling to the front of their DIY benches AKA high-end seating for the home!
Gail at My Repurposed Life has assembled a few DIY benches made from old headboards. These include a variety of styles, from carved and patterned to spindled, and some with upholstered backs.
You can make your own custom seat cushions (Beneath My Heart has a tutorial) for your DIY benches, or order them online from a variety of vendors (including CushionSource.com and CushionPros.com).
Clear the clutter in your entryway or mudroom with a DIY benches to store shoes. It’s more attractive than a basket catchall for everybody’s footwear, and provides extra seating for sitting, tying, buckling and Velcro-ing!
These plans for DIY benches from Ana White are two-fers: shoe storage cubbies below, and hinged hidden storage plus extra seating on top.
Extraordinary Chairs
Instructables.com, the website where people share what they do and how they do it, recently posted a how-to on making your own Rubber Hose Chair. It’s a little rough around the edges, so admittedly not for every decor, but it is an example of making offbeat design ideas accessible to more DIYers.
If you’re still a fan of print over digital, this Bookshelf Chair from Good Home Design keeps good reading material right at your fingertips. It’s a statement chair and takes up more room than the minimalist variety – but then it’s also a bookshelf, so we can forgive the space hoggery!
And finally, the Suitcase Chair. You know you want one. And depending on the style and dimensions of your vintage luggage and the four legs you choose, you can make this DIY seating for your home any look you want. The possibilities are rife. Another Suitcase Chair, dreamed up by DIY Cozy Home, looks completely different and offers a glimpse of
possible style directions.
The Poultry People, more crafty DIYers at Instructables.com, came up with instructions for a rustic, Viking Chair that looks like it would create conversation-starter DIY seating for you home — indoors or out. The project takes an afternoon, as long as you already have the pallets!
Pinch Seating
In a pinch, you can take one of these inventive ideas for striking ottomans and easily insure extra seating for big extended family gatherings in your family or rec room.
In an easy-to-imitate video tutorial, DIY Joy takes a vintage milk crate and with some plywood, batting and fabric creates an eye-pleasing seating alternative.
And while to look at it you’d think this exotic piece was shipped directly from Asia, this striking ottoman/seat is actually a rubber tire carefully wrapped with rope! The craftspeople at Handimania translated a step-by-step photo tutorial from Portuguese to English so those of us who are mono-lingual can make one of our own. Talk about repurposing!
Crystal Valley Craftsmanship!
The builders take pride in the craftsmanship that goes into every home in the master-planned community of Crystal Valley. We invite you to tour the neighborhoods here and explore the stunning model by Kauffman Homes and the latest in home designs by Richmond American Homes and D.R. Horton, available in ranch or two-story models, and priced from the $300s.
