Contents
Benches and benches in the country and in the garden are primarily a place of rest. But just putting up a bench is not interesting. After all, you can create a beautiful corner. In order not just to relax, but to enjoy nature and the fruits of your labor. There are many interesting ideas. Moreover, the simplest designs are often played up, such that any person whose hands grow from their shoulders can make these benches with their own hands.
Photo of original benches (ideas for summer cottages and gardens)
Everyone knows what ordinary benches look like – they have seen it more than once. But the usual – the simplest – something does not want to. Especially if you have already begun the process of decorating the site or are just planning. Why not start from the bench? And there and other decorations will catch up. It’s worth just getting started.
In the garden or near the house, I want to have more greenery: beautiful and different flowers. Flowerbeds and flower beds are good, but why not combine them with a bench.
What could be easier? Two wooden boxes in which flowers are planted and between them a pair of planed and polished boards. You can put this bench near the wall, and fill a couple of long boards on the wall – there will be a back.
Not everyone likes wooden flower beds: wood requires care, and without it, it quickly loses its appearance. It is especially difficult to care for a tree that comes into contact with the soil. Instead of wooden boxes, there can be, for example, stone or concrete pedestals.
It is very easy to make such a bench in the country with your own hands. You can find ready-made concrete flower beds or do something similar. You can buy a board processed, or you can do it yourself. Instead of a board, there may be half a log – depending on the style in which the site is made out. It is easier to fix the seat with a metal corner. It is attached to concrete with dowels, to wood – with self-tapping screws from below or through bolts.
If someone has large plants in durable flowerpots, you can implement the following idea. In this embodiment, the bench covers the plants. To avoid surprises, flowerpots must be very durable ….
There is a similar version of a bench made of boards and without plants: maybe you need to put it on the veranda or in the gazebo. The supports are made up of boards of the same size, and the seat is made of timber.
And another variation on the same theme: hollow building blocks are used as a support. Processed bars are inserted into the holes. This is the bench seat. Just round the edges of the beam, or it will be uncomfortable to sit.
For this garden bench, it is desirable to find large blocks with thick walls. If not, you need to securely fasten the blocks one to the other. The whole task is to fix the blocks first (for example, with studs), and then to them – the bars (with bolts or dowels).
Log benches
If your site is decorated in a rustic or ethno style, the standard approach will not work for you. It is best to use logs in this case – with or without bark – this is your choice.
Seat for a bench made of logs – sawn along the trunk of a large or medium diameter. The back is either a smaller diameter trunk, or just a cut closer to the edge. The legs can also be made from narrow pieces of logs (see the photo below).
The legs and seats are interconnected with metal pins: a hole of a slightly smaller diameter is drilled under the pin in both parts. The pin is hammered into one of them, the second part is planted and also hammered, but they are not hitting the pin, but the wood. So that there are no traces, they lay a piece of an unnecessary board and knock on it with a hammer (or sledgehammer). Such a connection should be quite reliable, but to be sure, you can install two or three pins, or you can chop off a little log, making a flat area of the same size on both connected parts. By increasing the area of support, increase the reliability of the seat fastening: after all, the log weighs a lot.
Another interesting option in the style of “ethno” is presented in the photo above. It is implemented in stone, but you can also make this bench from a log. The seat is a very thick board, the legs are the bulk of the large diameter deck. A groove is cut in the deck for laying the seat. If you have a tool (you can make a cutout with an ax, a grinder or a chainsaw), it’s easy to do.
Often in the country you need a desktop. From a log you can make not only a bench, but also a table. A variant of such an ensemble is in the photo. Only the tabletop is made of boards, all other details are logs of different diameters or from halves.
A greater degree of processing is inherent in the next bench in the same style. The back, legs, armrests are made of thick and not very thick branches, the seat is made of sanded and processed (peeled and sanded) unedged boards.
Another bench is almost also made. Only boards and branches are located in a different direction and a different view is obtained. A do-it-yourself bench of this type does not require much skill. In this case, the more careless the work is, the more decorative the result.
Around the tree, you can make a platform for relaxation and a bench. The designs are simple, making the flooring is generally simple.
You can complement the rest group with a swing and a gazebo. And above the bench you can put a pergola – this is the “progenitor” of the usual arch – one of the types of light gazebos. And so that relaxation is completely complete, you can make a pond, fountain or waterfall.
From metal and wood
Few people will put fully metal benches in their country house. They, of course, can be very beautiful, but in the summer they heat up to incredible temperatures, and it gets a little colder – you can’t sit on them, as they are too cold. Benches made of metal and wood are deprived of these shortcomings. The legs and supporting structure are made of metal, and the seat and back (if any) are made of wood. Moreover, there are also interesting benches in modern design.
Rectangles are welded from the profile, jumpers are welded to the side walls, on which the seat boards rest. Simple, stylish, reliable, functional.
In a more advanced form – with armrests, backrest, soft cushions on the seat, this design may look like in the photo. The wide seat turns the bench into a sofa, and cushions add comfort – fabric-covered furniture foam rubber. The tables are made in the same style – a frame made of corrugated pipe and a tabletop made of boards.
One important point: if you are making a seat or tabletop from several adjoining elements, they do not need to be joined back to back. There should be a gap of 3-4 mm between adjacent boards / bars. Wood swells and shrinks. In order for the surface to remain relatively flat during these processes, a gap is needed.
If smoother lines are needed – for families with children – you can bend the pipes and make garden benches and a table with rounded edges. This garden furniture is completely safe. The usual round or professional pipe is bent, leaving on the sides in the shape of the letter “P” with a wide back. The length of this back is the length of the bench. For the table, the dimensions are made a little larger: the legs and the back are longer.
Make two identical blanks on the table and bench. Next, cut the boards of the same length. For a seat about 40 cm, for a tabletop at least 55 cm. They are attached to the pipes with furniture bolts with a flat head. To prevent the caps from sticking out, a hole of a slightly larger diameter is drilled under them.
Read about the basics of site planning here, and how you can decorate it – in this article.
Board benches
The largest group is benches and benches made of boards. There are designs that are more reminiscent of sofas, especially if you put soft pillows on them – and you can lie down.
Garden furniture in a modern style is easy to assemble: rectangles with partitions made of thinner boards, interconnected.
Even the usual design of a country bench can become exclusive if you approach it with imagination: wooden wheels are used instead of legs and armrests. It turned out to be a designer thing.
And the simplest possible one is a board with legs in the form of the letter “X”. Such shops were built centuries ago, you can see them today.
From the boards you can make a bench in a modern style: in the form of the letter “P”. With this design, the main task is to ensure rigid fixation of the legs and the seat: the bursting forces are not compensated by anything. In this case, it is important to take a thick board or timber so that it does not sag. You can put the board “on edge”: so the rigidity will be greater. To increase reliability, you can install corners from below.
The photo shows a 45° cut. Having a miter box or a circular saw makes it easy to achieve an accurate cut. By precisely docking the workpieces and fastening them, we get an angle of 90 °. If the seat does not bend, it will serve for a long time …
An interesting and reliable version of the bench is shown in the photo below. The legs are assembled from boards of different lengths: every second one is shorter by the width of the board for the seat. Interesting idea. It is easy to make such a bench: it is important to maintain the dimensions, and everything is connected very simply: with nails into the face of the seat.
You may be interested in reading how to design and make garden paths.
Original benches
Here, it seems, what else you can think of .. but it turns out, a lot. For example, attach the seat to a large stone.
Make a structure out of bamboo trunks.
Or stone.
About what swings are (for adults and children) and how to build them, read here. And in this article you can read about the construction of a playground, it is written about sandboxes separately – here.
How to make a bench: photo reports
We will not make benches from stone – not everyone has the equipment, but from different pieces of wood – we can. Let’s talk about the manufacture of simple, but unusual designs. So that a bench made with your own hands is a source of pride.
A bench without a back
The design is simple, but it looks interesting due to the specific material. For the legs, a bar with rounded edges is used. If you have small logs, you can cut them on the sides. You get almost the same effect. Such material is not so rare, the legs are unusually assembled from it: the bars are laid one on top of the other flat. This adds zest and adds appeal.
This bench without a back has a length of about 120 cm, a width of about 45 cm, a height of 38 cm. You can round the edges of the beam with a cutter, or you can find a similar profiled one. It costs more, but it will be easier to work with it: it is already well processed and connects simply.
Depending on the found section of the beam, calculate the length that you need. Determine how many bars will have to be stacked one on top of the other to get the height you need. In this case, it took 5 bars per leg. Total 45 cm * 5 pcs – 2,25 m. It took 4,5 m of timber for two legs. A board 40 mm thick and 90 mm wide was used on the seat. For the seat you need 5 boards 1,5 meters long. It turned out 1,2 m * 5 pcs = 6 m.
First, we cut and process the boards for the seat. Their edges must be rounded. If there is no grinder or milling cutter, you will have to work with sandpaper, but you can find such a board or arrange at a sawmill to process it for you, and also grind it: there will be much less work. So, we cut the boards of the same length, grind and varnish (with or without tinting – your choice).
Fold the leg bars one near one, aligning their edges. Using a square and a pencil, draw lines where the fasteners will be placed. The distance between the lines is 7-10 cm.
You can take metal pins, or you can make dowels – carved from wood. Holes are drilled under them slightly smaller than the diameter, the depth of the hole is half the length of the pin. Then they are hammered into one part, a second part is pushed into the same hole from above. The connection is reliable, but to be sure, you can add glue, although then the design will turn out to be one-piece.
With a pin connection, the main task is to make holes strictly one above the other, so that the parts mounted on the pin give a smooth edge. We did part of the work – we drew lines where we will drill, now we need to measure the same distance from the edge. Let’s create a template for this. We take a piece of plank with a width of about 1,5 cm. At this distance from the edge of the bars, we will drill holes. Having applied it exactly along the edge, we mark the intersections with the applied perpendicular lines.
We will install the pins in a checkerboard pattern, so we will drill holes through one intersection. We also make holes on one bar from different sides in a checkerboard pattern. In a similar way – on the pins – the legs are connected to the seat: two pins for each bar.
Technologically, this type of connection is correct, but it is complex and requires a certain skill. You can do it easier. Fold all the bars one on top of the other, secure with clamps, drill through in two or three sets – in the center and along the edges, connect with a long hairpin, with washers placed under the cap and nut. To the legs of the seat strip assembled in this way, you can nail it on top or try to make a pin connection.
If you nailed the seat, take some wood putty of a suitable color, add some very fine sawdust and stir. Coat the joints with this composition. When dry, smooth with sandpaper. Sand all parts to a smooth finish and coat with lacquer or wood paints for outdoor use (better not covering, but which leave the grain of the wood visible).
How and with what you can paint wood, read this article. It refers to lining, but painting techniques remain the same, and the compositions must be taken for outdoor use.
DIY bench from broken chairs
In any household you can find two old chairs. They should be the same and still strong enough. We disassemble the chairs, leaving the part with the back and legs. We connect the two backs with the help of bars of a suitable section.
For greater rigidity at the bottom, at a distance of about 20 cm from the floor, where the chairs used to also have jumpers, we make another frame with transverse rails. It can be used as a footrest or for storage of any things.
After grinding, we paint the resulting structure. This time the paint should be ordinary: different types of wood can only be painted over with covering paints. Apply with a brush or spray bottle.
The point is small: cut the seat out of thick plywood (thickness 8-10 mm) and cover it with foam rubber and fabric.
Pallet garden chair/bench
Everything is useful in the economy. Even from cargo pallets you can make garden furniture. Moreover, there is no need to disassemble them: we use one for the seat, we will make the back from the second. All you need is well-crafted planks for the armrests and bars for the legs.
In one of the pallets, we strengthen the attachment points by inserting pieces of bars. After inserting, we fasten it with self-tapping screws on one side and on the other.
From a beam with a cross section of at least 100 * 100 mm, we cut four identical segments 80 cm long. We fasten them in those places that have just been reinforced. We leave 20-25 cm on the legs. We fasten with four long self-tapping screws – 150 mm and not shorter.
It is important to maintain verticality and leave the same distance on the legs. Then the seat will stand straight. If there are errors in height, you can try to file, but then you will have to cut from above – so that the armrests are even. So try to screw it straight. Deviations from the vertical can be dealt with only by screwing the leg again.
We attach a second pallet to the rear racks, and on the sides – planks for the armrests.
It remains to cut a piece of furniture foam rubber and cover it with a cloth. You can make pillows for the back. If you are not going to process everything thoroughly, but to make a loft-style chair, go over with sandpaper or a grinder, treating all surfaces to smoothness. You can cover with paint, giving the wood a dark color.
Drawings of benches made of wood
Video lessons
A few videos on how to make benches with your own hands.