Construction Archives - Page 9 of 11

The Ski Chalet came with so much of its own history, but it’s important to me to bring some of my own history and family history into the house as well. On a recent trip home, I was shopping in my parents barn for things I might need, and I came across my first snowboard. This is the one that my mom bought me at the ski swap when I was about 14 years old and I had decided I wanted to switch from skiing to snowboarding. I thought I could find a better use for it than collecting dust in the barn. 🙂 I turned it into a bench that will most likely find its place in one of the entryways of the house.

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This is the completed project! I love how it turned out! It was a fairly easy project and can be completed in a day.

To get myself started, I decided that I would build the bench and use a 1×8 board on top of the bench and screw the snowboard to the bench. This way I didn’t have to worry about whether or not the board would be sturdy enough to hold people up.

Using this 1×8 cut to the length that I decided, I sketched out a design that I wanted for the legs. It changed a little bit as I went, but I had the basic idea drawn out so I could figure out the height of the bench. I was aiming for it to sit around 18 inches high.

I’m not the best artist… but it worked to get my idea down and figure out some of the math. Beware, more math to come. 🙁

I used my compound miter saw for all of the cuts for this bench. This is the best tool!! I love this saw so much. If you’re interested in checking this one out, click here. The stand is sold separately (here), but I highly recommend it.

I started by cutting my pieces for the legs. The legs are going to be 12 inches wide. I measured and cut four pieces (two for each leg).

Using the miter saw, I cut each end to a 45 degree angle.

Once the angles have been cut, the shorter side comes out to be 9 inches, so I cut my 1x4s to 9 inches long. I cut 4 of these.

I also cut a 2×4 into two 13.5 inch pieces which will be the vertical pieces of the legs.

OK…. so here comes more math. You can do fancy math, or you can guess and adjust until you get what fits. Truthfully, either works. I used Google to find me an online triangle calculator to figure out how long my angled supports would be. I knew that my sides were 3.5 inches and I had a 90 degree angle at the top, and that I wanted 45 degree angles, and it magically told me that the long edge of my board needed to be 5.7 inches long. So, I cut 4 of these and then cut the ends off at 45 degree angles again.

Remember when we swore we’d never use geometry again!? Thank goodness for Google…

Now that I have all of my pieces cut, I started screwing them together in an order that seemed to make sense to me.

Here are my pieces all laid out before being screwed together.

On the angled pieces, I pre-drilled holes to make attaching with screws easier.

I never used to bother with pre-drilling holes until I got my new Ryobi set (here), which allows me to drill holes with one and then place a screw with the other without letting go of my boards. Super handy!

Once the legs were put together, I had to decide how far apart they should be and cut a 2×4 to that length and attach between them and then attach the board to the top.

I filled all the screw holes with wood putty and then sanded off the dried putty as well as softened all the edges and corners.

I painted the base before attaching the snowboard and used the sander to distress the edges and corners.

I found bolts at the lumber yard that were smooth on top. I wanted to use something that wouldn’t hurt to sit on. 🙂 I used these to attach the board to the base.