Hey everyone! I hope you are enjoying your summer so far! Although the weather has been beautiful, our kids literally just finished school last week so we haven’t had too much time to enjoy it yet. I’ve spent some of my time on weekends hitting the garage sales and I hit my favorite one this weekend and scored huge! I picked up this old piano bench for just $5. One of my garage sale tips is to always look behind and under stuff and it happened to be tucked away the back of a pile. The veneer on the top was pealing off and it was scratched in quite a few places. It definitely needed some love and who’s up for the job?? Me! Time for a piano bench makeover, farmhouse style. I think this is one of my favorite projects evvvver and I think you’ll like it too!
It started out like this…
I had planned on replacing the top and adding a bit of farmhouse charm with some reclaimed wood so the first thing I did was remove it.
The next step was getting it ready for paint with a light sanding with my palm sander. I used a 220 grit sandpaper just to dull the shiny areas a bit. We gave it a bit more stability with a brace in the middle made out of a piece of 2 x 4. It also gave us another spot to secure the new top with the nail gun.
Now it’s ready for paint. I used my go to home made chalk paint with plaster of Paris in creamy white.
I wanted the top to be stained not painted. We happened to have a piece of 12 x 10 x 1 rough saw pine left over from the barn and some other projects. It’s the same wood we used on the sewing table makeover and the DIY industrial bookshelf. I asked my hubby to cut it down for me in 3 equal pieces which happened to be about 4.78 inches wide each. I wanted the edges to hang over each side and the ends about 1/4 of an inch.
They have the prettiest gray patina where each board has weathered in the sun. Thank you Mother Nature! I thought that gray would look cool with the stain so I used the side that had the most gray covering the surface. I smoothed the boards down by sanding each quite a bit with the palm sander and 100 grit sandpaper. We put them on the top just to dry fit them. What a difference already, right!?
I gave the bottom another coat of paint and then it was on to staining the boards. I used Minwax stain in Honey and applied it with a cotton rag, wiping the excess off with another rag. I like using my husbands old white cotton t-shirts for this.
I love the way the stain brought out the knots in the wood and the gray tones. I also added a shelf in the same type of wood to the bottom for more storage and to give the bottom more weight. The piano bench makeover was complete and what a transformation!
I updated our foyer a while back but it needed just a tweak and the new farmhouse bench fit perfectly. I love how the wood ties in with the dresser and mirror and, of course, the new coffee table.
The only unfortunate thing about this is that now that I have changed things around a bit, I’m feeling the need to update some other things. I think you may see some changes in the near future. Maybe it’s just the sunshine and warm weather talkin’. We’ll see. 🙂
Next time you’re at the garage sale or flea market, take a second look around. You never know what you’ll find buried at the bottom of a pile that may need your dose of TLC.
