Park Bench

When Joe and I first came to Los Angeles, we moved from a tiny Manhattan apartment, so we had a lot of furnishing to do.  One of the first additions to our house was this park bench, which is now one of our favorite places to sit in the house.

I found an old bench with broken slats that someone was throwing away.  Saving the beautiful curvy cast iron pieces, we replaced the broken wood with new red oak.  It was too pretty to put in the garden, so it has been sitting by our front door ever since.

It really is a comfortable place to sit, and people have even been known to take cat naps there (although whenever I see that, I want to blanket them in a newspaper to keep them warm Central Park-style.)  We used new brass bolts with round button tops to attach the wood.

The whole project cost us about $40, but it could be done for a lot less if you used pine or recycled wood.  One of the fun parts was deciding how long we wanted the bench to be.  I almost made it into a chair, and someday I'll probably make another one as a matching chair, which I think would make excellent living room furniture.

The combination of velvet, wood and cast iron makes me very happy!