Garden And Yard Build The Planting Bench of your dreams

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8. Set in lower shelf.
Frame, cut, and fasten bench-top Set the bench frame upright. Decide how deep you want your permanent bottom shelf to be (five 3 3/4"-wide boards along the back of the 24-inch-deep cabinet, leaving about 6 inches of kick-room in front, is best for me.) Apply glue to ends and bottom of end-edges of shelf boards, set them square on bottom cleats, and fasten with pilot-drilled 1 1/2" nails into their ends through peg and rear legs. Once glue is dry, fasten the back of the rear shelf to the peg with drywall screws every 6 inches.

Measuring on the work, cut, and fasten two (about 23-inch-long) dual-board 1" x 4" sandwiches to serve as front-to-back supports for benchtop boards. Place their front ends atop the cleat fastened inside the front brace, and the rear ends into the pair of slots you built into the rear benchtop support cleats. Cut two short lengths of 1 x 2 to place under the rear ends. Glue and pilot-drill/screw all to back panel and front brace. Find the 1" x 4" trim board you made earlier to cover the front brace between inner edges of front leg boards. Glue and screw-fasten invisibly through the back of the underlying brace.

Measure on the benchtop and cut bench-top boards to fit from 5/4-inch-thick top-grade, 4-inch-or- 6-inch-wide lumber. You can have boards butted tight together or separated by a fraction of an inch. They can overhang the frame by 3/4" at front and sides (the rear boards will have to be trimmed to fit between the back legs). Or, for a more finished look, eliminate the lip; cut all bench-top board ends flush with front and side edges, and box the sides with 1" x 2" or 1" x 3" edging-cutting corners at a 45-degree angle if you have a miter saw. If you need to split a board to fill the top without excess lip at front, place the narrower board at the back. Glue, pilot-drill and nail benchtop boards to rim and center supports with 1 1/2" finish nails. For best-finished appearance, lightly scribe nailing guide-lines over underlying support-boards and insert nails evenly in straight lines along scribe lines

For a finishing touch, you can rim the shelftop with 1" x 2" boards. Or, use cornice or other molding. I just nailed a length of 1 x 2 across the front as a lip. Then, I added another strip at the back to keep stuff from lodging down between the back and the wall. Now, start growing.

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