DIY 30 dollar work bench

 DIY 30 DOLLAR WORK BENCH!!!!

Hey there internet. Long time no talk!!! 

SO J and I have been using this glorious wonder that is a sofa table as our miter saw bench. It has been really difficult for me to use a beautiful piece of furniture as a sawdust collector. SAD. Well as is usually the case one day recently I had enough and packed up all the kids and made the trek to Lowes to get some wood. I had my notebook in hand and I was ready to make a bench! That is how everything in this house starts. I get a whim and I'm off. J thinks I'm fearless lol. Maybe... I call it being a DO-ER.

SUPPLY LIST: 

1 4x8 sheet of OSB (oriented strand board) 

7 2x4's 

2.5 inch screws

3 inch screws 

After a ridiculous amount of time trying to track down a person to cut the wood down for us someone finally showed up! We had them cut the OSB in half length wise. So we had 2 sheets of OSB that were 2' x 8'. These will the the top. We have a miter saw so we did all the 2x4 cuts our selves. Our garage only lent its self to a 14 foot bench so we made one frame at 8 feet long and the other at 6 feet long. We didn't cut down our 8 foot long 2x4's

CUT LIST: 

1 OSB cut to 72"

2 - 2x4 cut to 2" 

10- 2x4 cut to 21"

6 - 2x4 cut at a 45 degree angle (long point to short point) 31"

Here is where it gets fun! INSTALLING IT! It helps if you have a partner to help you with this part unless you want to prop the frames up on tables or something. Good luck to you! These things are pretty heavy. So unless you're a logger with big burly man arms, get a buddy to help you out.

First up we made the frames. 

Im terribly sorry for the quality of these pictures. My camera wasn't charged for this whole project :(. 

Anyway the frame was very simple to put together we just laid everything out on the garage floor and screwed it together. We made 2 of them. The first at 6 feet and and the second at 8 feet so that when they were up and on the wall the entire bench would be 14 feet long. 

Installing them on the wall was fairly easy. I just held it up so it would sit at 36" on the wall (keep in mind J and I are short. He's 5'7 and I'm 5'4 so plan a height that works for you) and J used our 3 inch screws to secure it to the studs. Thankfully our garage has walls that aren't textured or painted so we were easily able to see them. Oh and we made sure it was level. That's important. 

Next we put the angle braces in to hold it to the wall. These are the 31" pieces that you cut at an angle. 

You'll notice that the point on top here has been lopped off. Well, we got everything up there and decided we wanted a nice tight fit so we snugged it up and just marked where the top of the frame was and took off that point. Easy peasy lemon squeezy! We secured them with our 2.5 inch screws through the front of the frame. J secured them to the wall with the 3 inch screws while I held it up to make sure the front was level with the back. 

Finally we secured the OSB to the top!

Annnnnnnd because it was like 7000 degrees in my garage I didn't take any pictures of it actually going onto the frame. SORRY! But here is the best I can do. I just secured it to the frame with 1.5 inch finish nails. Then I painted the frame and stained the top. About 5 coats of polyurethane later we had a functional bench! TADA!

After everything was dry I started adding all the fun stuff. 

A place for our speed square and all our pens and junk. That lonely screw on the right there holds our small level. 

J used to work at a major electrical supply company so he had about a hundred of these super strong magnets. I just screwed it on there and it holds that tape measure there pretty well! And no garage is complete without a bottle opener !!!

Here she is in all her glory! Not bad for a Saturday and 30 dollars! 

Again. Please excuse the nightmare going on under the bench. We're getting to that ;)