Venice Mudroom Bench!

One of the first projects I did in the house was a mudroom bench for shoe storage, coats, and storing hats and gloves above.  This was really my first time installing any type of trim or building any type of furniture.  I must say, the bench was much, much easier than I had anticipated.  With a few trips to home depot to purchase a miter saw, some wood, caulk, and fabric from the fabric store, I had a bench built in no time!

I started by googling mudroom bench tutorials, and stumbled across one that was submitted in a blog called "being home."  I found some cross-links to the blog, but it appears the original blog is no longer active.

http://www.ana-white.com/2013/02/mudroom-bench

For the trim, I used a product from Home Depot called "Finished Elegance," which was basically a finished 1x4 piece of MDF board.  Finished Elegance is very nice because you don't have to paint it.  I did also purchase a brad nailer to nail the trim to the wall, which had to be filled in with the matching Finished Elegance caulk.

During a trip to the fabric store, I realized how incredibly expensive foam is for building cushions!  I believe the foam that I wanted was going to come to about $65, which seemed overpriced for me.  I ended up buying a $15 foam mattress topper from Wal Mart, and cutting and stacking the pieces together to form the cushion.

For the shoe racks, I purchased 2 $10 shoe racks from target, and mounted them to the center floor support.  Some how, it ended up being a perfect fit, and they actually look like they go along with the hand-made bench.

The total cost of the mudroom bench ended up being a little bit less than I would pay for a mudroom bench hall tree, ~$250 (including paint, etc.), however; I did have to invest in some tools that I didn't have.  The two major purchases (miter saw and brad nailer) that I had to make have been incredibly useful.  The Ridgid battery powered brad nailer has been the most used tool, and now I am wondering how I could have lived without one.

Mudroom Bench Progress

The hardest part of building the mudroom bench was the bench itself, which took me several cuts to get the top MDF board to the correct size so it fit in the space.  Once the bench was installed, the rest of the trim was so easy!  The trim is just installed "board and batten" style, directly on top of the drywall which was painted white.

Below is the finished product in use!  Coming from someone who had absolutely NO building or handyman skills, I can honestly say this project is very feasible for someone who is willing to invest the time, and will use a saw.  Overall the project took me about 12 hours including all of the finishing (painting and caulk).  Let me know if you have any questions in the comments section!