I know I’ve hyped it up, but not without good reason. My husband MADE patio furniture with his OWN TWO HANDS. I think I have the right to hype. He got the plans for the chairs from Knock Off Wood and built those first. Then he used her plans to draft a custom-sized trunk to hold our pillows. THEN he drafted his own plan for a table creation that houses a small fire pit thing for ambiance. Amazing, right? Most of the construction process is captured in the pictures that follow, but feel free to leave a comment with any questions. I will try to talk Brian into having a Q&A post if we need/want one!
Step 1: Buy all the wood. We also bought a miter saw to cut all the pieces. I was a little wary of buying a saw, but it turned out to be a blessing with all the cuts he made (the Lowe’s people would have HATED us). We do have a circular saw, but it was more expensive to buy the table to keep that saw and the wood steady while cutting than it was to buy the miter. So, we bought the miter.
Here you can also see our old patio furniture, which was a hand-me-down from a co-worker. It got TONS of use, but only seats two people… with Brian home in the summers he wanted a place to sit (my friend Meredith and I were constantly occupying the only two seats).
Step 2: Cut the wood using Knock Off Wood’s guide for the Armless Sectional.
Step 3: Assemble chairs.
Step 4: Stain chairs. We were staining virgins and bought one of those cans that already has the stain mixed in. We didn’t know you could ask the nice people at Lowe’s to make a stain you actually picked out. We went with the one that looked dark brown on the label, but sadly it was red. Whoops. Not what we wanted.
We decided to wait to re-stain until we (Brian) made the table. Once he constructed the table, we’d go in and stain everything.
That brings us to Step 5: Make the table. As I said before, Brian came up with this on his own construction plan, so I don’t have a link for you… maybe he’ll tell us how he did that. I didn’t ask him at the time b/c it involved graph paper and lots of numbers. I do actually like both those things, but felt like it was kind of a lot of work to force him to explain it all to me… Sometimes you just have to trust your husband, I guess.
The thing in the middle is for the fire part of the table. It’s pretty cool. More on that later.
Step 6: Build the trunk for the cushions using Knock Off Wood’s template for an Outdoor Storage Bench. Brian adapted these so our cushions would fit, so I think it’s a little bigger than the one she made.
We’re currently using a big piece of flat wood as the top. I think there is a plan to make a more functional top, but I’m not 100% on that. It works just fine right now, so the change may come in the far off future…
Step 6: Stain everything and buy cushions. Oh, and figure out the fire part.
As you can see, the chairs have a bit of a red undertone compared to the table, but it works.
Here is are some close ups of the cushions:
We got the red cushions from Target and the blue cushions with the red squigley from Crate and Barrel. Here’s a close up of the back pillow:
We got the fire pit from Walmart (of course I can’t find it now…) and the blue stones at Ikea. Brian bought fire gel to go in the center of the fire pit, but then decided to put the gel in something that fit in the pit instead of just directly in the pit. He found this metal canister in our guest bathroom and decided it was perfect. Which meant I got to go to HomeGoods to get another one (and lots of other things, of course)!
And there you have it – our new patio furniture! We love it, though it has been pretty hot here, so we haven’t gotten to use it as much as we’d like… but I’m pretty impressed with Brian’s handy work. I need to start a list of other things we need around the house – headboard? dresser? desk?? The possibilities are endless!
What do you guys think? Pretty snazzy, right? Any questions for Brian?
