This Bay Window Bench project of ours was easy and completed within a weekend. In our house this is located in our tv room and it is perfect because it serves as additional seating and a cute lookout for our guard dog Morty. The space under the bench is also used as storage for blankets, extra pillows or even dog toys. This bench was a great addition to our first floor and it constantly gets used by either the dogs or us taking a weekend afternoon nap.

Total Cost (Materials): $90 – Link to our Project Checklist

In the pictures above you can see that if we didn’t have the built in bench in the bay window, it’d be a tough spot to fill. The previous owners had a pool table in the room and filled in that space with two barstools and a bar table. Before we had a bench, we had two basic chairs and an end table between the two. Another push for the bench was Morty’s habit to jump up with his paws on the window sill whenever he’d hear a noise or a delivery truck coming down the road. You can see in the last picture on the sills where it’s scratch up. The bench allows him to get the visibility that he wants without damaging our windows/walls up.

🛠 T O O L S – needed for the project [For a full breakdown of what we bought (with link/prices), click on this Link to our Project Checklist]:

  • Kreg Jig (pocket hole jig)
  • Jig Saw (cut the wood and plywood)
  • Basic Power Drill and Screw Driver stuff
  • Staple Gun (it doesn’t have to be pneumatic or attached to an air compressor)
  • Stud Finder (for the wall mounts) [A MUST]

📦 M A T E R I A L S – we used (this may differ with your bench space):

📼 R E S O U R C E

First order of business was clearing out the area and then measuring the pieces of wood to fit to size. We used pieces of cardboard to get the angles right and traced the angle of the cardboard onto the wood get a decently accurate cut. To cut the wood we used a jigsaw with a wood blade and went slow and steady. If you try to force the blade through the wood, the blade will bend and you’ll either get a curved cut or it won’t be straight and you’ll have to course correct the blade. When each wood board is cut and tested in the space we joined each of the pieces together with kreg jig pocket screws spaced 6 inches apart and 2 1/2 inch kreg screws. You can see the holes that we drilled in one of the pictures below here.

The next step after joined the boards together we attached the hairpin legs to the bottom. We used 3 legs in total, two on the ends and one in the middle to distribute the weight more evenly. In addition to the legs, the bench is also held up by 2″x4″s mounted into studs on the surrounding walls, these 2x4s are holding the majority of the weight and makes the bench extremely sturdy. Once the boards were cut to size we identified where the studs were along the walls (super important because people will be sitting and laying on the bench – we feel super safe with even 3 people on our bench!). Once the studs were identified we propped the bench up and placed the wood boards under the bench against the wall and drilled a smaller hole into the wood in the stud locations. Then used 3 inch screws to mount the wood boards to the wall.

The bench at this point is complete, but if you’re looking to add a cushion to the bench to make it more comfy, the next few pictures will talk through those steps. We had a memory foam bed topper left over from college so we decided to use that as a topper. In the pictures above you can see us trying to trace out the bench over the foam and we used some larger scissors to cut through the material. The cushion ended up being two pieces, which is okay, the fabric will be pulled taught over the foam and stapled to the plywood.

We did a test run and assembled the bench with the cushion and we just overlaid a table cloth to see what it would look like all finished.

Last few steps of the cushion are to cut a single piece of plywood to size (we bought a 4’x8′ sheet of plywood and cut that down to size with a jig saw). We then took the fabric that we wanted cover everything with and pulled it taught around the cushion and used a staple gun to staple the fabric to the plywood. As you can see, really pulling the fabric taught gave us the clean crisp look that we were going for. Below you’ll see the bench all styled up with pillows.

Project Completed April 27 2019