DIY Bench
We needed a place to store a few more shoes in our house's entry area. There isn't really a good place in the mud room for it, so I came up with the idea of putting some storage in front of the door, right at the top of the stairway.
There's just enough room next to the door to have a little bench. It should provide room for garden shoes, rubber boots and some storage for things like gloves and Kaddi's favorite garden shears.
I made a little drawing and Kaddi and I got to work.
As you can see in the final pictures, the construction changed a bit from the initial plan but is quite simple: One side provides the full height of the bench to place the rubber boots, the other half has an open shelf and a compartment under the seat. A piano hinge allows for opening the half with the compartment.
The bench is constructed from spruce wood. It got two coats of mahogany wood stain and was finished with bees wax polish.
What wood working YouTubers never tell you, is how time consuming the finishing process is. It's always just a quick mention and a jump cut to the finished product. But applying the stain, sanding, staining again and polishing took longer than actually building the thing.
Also if you wonder why YouTubers work so much with plywood: real wood is just never as straight and precise to work with. So this bench is a bit crooked at several places – but that's just fitting for our house. There's not a straight wall here either 
