As you might know already, we’re always scanning the Nextdoor app to find the free/good deals locally. we’ve gotten lucky a handful of times with either amazing deals or just out right steals that people just give away for free. I think this outdoor bench turned out to be an 7/10 on the steal factor. To gauge our leather couch find was a 10/10 (original price 6k+, thanks neighbor) but the bench is a 7/10 because it was free and we had to put a little bit of TLC into it. Overall it wasn’t difficult and it took a weekend to complete. What really drew me to project was the cast iron frame, if needed we could’ve replaced the wood slats but restoring the wood turned out great. We followed four simple streps to restore the wood and bring the antique bench back to life; sanding, staining, sealing and assembly.
Initially I was contemplating whether or not I should replace the wood slats. From the pic below you can see that the wood was bending quite a bit. It’s possible to restore the wood color but durability isn’t as easy to get back. I ended up taking the risk and went with the path of restoring the wood, versus buying new from Lowes.
Here’s a list of the tools 🛠 that we needed for our project [Click here for our project checklist – it’s a list of all the tools/items that we used for this project]:
- Adjustable wrenches or to make it quicker a socket wrench (this is project specific because of the nuts and bolts holding our wood slats.
- Palm Sander or Orbital Sander with 40 to 120 grit sand paper
- Disposable Paint Brushes – Pre-stain, stain and poly urethane are really hard to wash out, we learned the hard way and ruined a few of the nice brushes that we typically recommend for painting
Resource:
Refresher on how to condition and stain wood: 1.2 M Views – This Old House 1.4 Subscribers
I started by first, of course disassembling each of the wood slats from the cast iron. In my opinion it’s easier this way versus trying to half ass it and sand the bench down while it’s still attached. Removing each board also allows you to sand down the edges and this will make the sealing process that much better in the long run. I took 40 grit sand paper with my palm sander and actually used all three of my batteries to get the job done (I can’t wait to get a corded sander). In the pic below you can see that it was just so satisfying removing that black grime from the wood. USE a mask! You have no idea what you’re inhaling and it’s better to protect your lungs from any small particles, bacteria or chems being lifted into the air.
After giving my batteries a full recharge I came back to the project and sanded the slats once more with something finer, 120 grit, to really smooth out the edges and remove any last standing mildew.
I next got my staining supplies out. In the pic above the brushes are covering THE most important ingredient to staining (IMO), it’s a pre-stain or pre-conditioner. This stuff is magic and if you watch any videos on YouTube you’ll see the difference that it makes when you apply your actual stain. The pre-stain does a great job of prepping your wood to be able to absorb the stain color evenly throughout the wood, this reduces splotchiness. I also, pulled out a pair of disposable nitrile gloves. I would suggest wearing gloves, because you will need to twist and turn the wood that you’re staining and you want to protect yourself from those harsh chems. The last few items are favorite brushes, then our stain choices (we ended up going with the golden oak color), Like in our kitchen we did a mixture of these two stain colors (applied the golden oak first then the English Chestnut second to get the color we wanted) but with the bench wood being so dark to start we only needed the golden oak stain.
It’s pretty easy after sanding, I conditioned all of the wood at once (this allows the wood to dry for at least 20-30 min but NO more than 2 hours). After conditioning with pre-stain, use a different brush to apply the stain and just rinse and repeat.
After letting all of that dry overnight I then sealed it with 2 coats of polyurethane. Sealing the wood is very important if you want to protect it from the elements. I used polyurethane last year to seal our mail box and it looks brand new still (After sealing the bench slats I went over to the mail box and re-applied another coat). Here’s where I messed up, I used one of our nice brushes to apply polyurethane and I ruined it. When I went to clean the brush afterwards the bristles got tacky and they ended up all sticking together. I would highly recommend that you get a disposable brush or if you find a better way to clean the brush please let me know!
After letting the the wood slats dry overnight one final time, I then laid out the pieces on the cast iron to see what it would look like. In the pic above you can see that the iron has a strong patina appearance to it. In my opinion it didn’t match the wood slats so I ended up spray painting the iron with a matte black paint.
Once the paint dried after a few hours, I assembled the bench back together and we moved it to the back porch. We will be using this as extra seating on our porch table! I noticed after a few days of letting the seal cure, it gave strength back into the wood and there’s a lot less of a bend when sitting on the bench.
Project Completed June 6, 2020