This beautiful bench, made by my talented husband Simon, was a somewhat useless twin head/footboard in a former life!
If you have some old bed frames lying around collecting dust, you may want to pull out the chop saw and get building! If you don't like using the power tools - I don't - then find yourself a Simon!
Here is how Mr. Wilson did it.
First he found a bed frame on the side of the house collecting dust. Yes - on the side of the house. The garage is completely full of more important pieces! This one was intended for scrap wood.
Next, you chop it up and stuff. Really. I don't know exactly what he did to it. But I do know that he used almost all of the bed. The sides are the bed rails. The front is the footboard, minus some of it - so you could actually sit on it. And I know he took great care in measuring the seat height before he chopped things up. Lot's of measuring was going on.
And then some scrap wood was used to make the seat.
We debated over whether it should have arms on the sides, and decided not to put them on, as it was made from a twin bed, so it's not very large, and we wanted it to feel more open, and roomy.
And then I came along with my fabulous Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. This is a mixture of Florence and Napoleonic Blue. I painted it, distressed it, and then finished it with a minwax polyurethane/stain in one. I hadn't tried that finish before, but I imagined this bench living outside, and I wanted it to look antiqued, and I didn't want to spend too much time doing all sorts of layers to get the look I wanted.
I love my Bed Turned Bench.
This twin bed did have a twin. There were two! So keep an eye out for the next one!