Primitive Five Board Benches

Nice work Kelly.
They look exelent.
Best thoughts, glad to see you,
Mads

So cool, Kelly! I just love your rustic stuff. I hope you are thawing out and able to get some work done outside soon.

Sheila

Nice benches,Welcome back,hope winter has not frozen you out too much. keep up the good work, and thanks for posting them.

Gotta love that worn effect finish

Very nice work Rivergirl, I especially like the red one, outstanding job on the finish. Has the Allegheny crested yet, we've sent a lot of melted snow your way. Sorry about that.

Thanks everyone for your warm welcome back. Still crappy weather here. The Allegheny has crested and receded a tiny bit. More to come I am sure. The big ice dams went by last week. Fun to watch. Down river about 1/4 mile they are currently flooded. There a creek merges into the river and the creek turns into a small river itself several times a year. The homeowners there have to use a higher level back entrance. My house sits on a knoll so the house never floods. The dock however was floating in the yard and we need to move it to higher ground. Maybe tomorrow? Ready to get back to some log and slab, but that will be while yet I'm afraid. These little benches aren't too bad to build. I have three spring garden shows coming up and they requested primitive benches so I gave it a whirl. (Julie hooked me up with her blog which was really excellent and easy to follow.) I think I am getting the knack of that primitive finish. LOL But I do miss my logs.

Hey Kelly, you remind me a lot of me when I started. I made nothing but primitive furniture too. It was almost like looking in a mirror. You do good work. My old shop used to be a little one car garage that was just big enough to hold my tools and my current project(s) at the time. So I had to work a lot outside on the sun. That's when my pop up awning came in real handy. I burned my arms and neck very often back then. Now I have a extra wide two car garage and my abilities have got much better. Keep it up, your stuff looks great!

Keep working with what you have available. That's also primitive. Creating from what nature provides.

Good stuff, you really seem to have tons of energy and desire. Fun…..................

Thanks so much you guys! RocknH- I am READY for a good sunburn. Long winters here in PA!

I love primitive style, the yellow color is my favorite, so I guess Dale and Ican divide them up without a fight! lol

Good to see you are keeping busy. Nice benches !
(Don't you just hate when you get to park the yacht closer to the house in spring ?)
I guess close is better than IN.

No yacht… an old 18 or 19 foot CrisCraft open bow. No payments- runs good. Maintained by the future son in-law which is the best part. Can't wait to fire up the fossil fuel and smell the fumes!

Kelly great to see you come out of hibernation.

The sweet smell of sawdust.

They look great, the ivory is very authentic.

Jamie

Well, Jamie- use old boards and beat the hell out of them, then paint multiple times then sand the hell of it.. a very precise process. LOL

Perhaps it's time to grab the swimsuit with all that water, in this way you might also become in a summer mood… lol.
Mads

WOW Kelly, fabulous!!
I love the paint work, how do you do it so it looks so good??
You really did a great job… much better than mine.

Well, Julie, I should do a blog for you. LOL The trick is dry brush on one coat of paint (in this case black- almost always black.) let dry. Dry brush on second coat (red, mustard, hunter green etc.) . Let dry. Then garner up your courage and use a palm sander to sand the hell out of it. Sand all the edges and then when the paper is a bit used up- run the sander of the flat surfaces. (I hold my sander at about a 45 degree angle on the edges and wiggle it around. I like to see wood on the edges of all the faces. Then when the sanding is complete, dust the bench it off. Next use a foam brush to apply a sloppy coat of dark stain. I cover the whole bench, then wipe it off- When it is all wiped off, go overit again and rub and wipe to get a uniform finish with no pools or gray areas of stain. The get a clean rag and do the final wipe off rub in. let dry. That is called a "prim finish" The end. Julie, you could go back to your green bench and resand and stain and it would look entirely different. Give it a try if you still have the bench. Let me know how it goes! It is hard for a good finish carpenter/cabinet maker to sand enough I think. It really does "ruin" the finish so to speak and that goes against the grain of good finish carpenters. Also, you don't need to do a full cover of either layer of paint. Makes sanding easier if you don't and it lets layers appear in the final product.

Well you have captured the way to make it look prim (or old) perfectly! Do you use any specific type of paint or just whatever?

I have made things being careful to measure, keep parts joined neatly, sanded smooth, etc. and then have whacked the piece with a hammer, nails, chains, etc. to distress it. It seems very strange after being so careful to have things look nice and then to "beat them up," but I do like the distressed look.

Hey Kelly, my dimensions are in my project comments now!

Thanks Rockn. Julie- some purists here on L/J will argue that you need to use expensive "milk paint" but let me tell you I use any old left over latex paint I can get for FREE . I mix the colors etc. If you have to buy paint I buy Walmart's cheapest flat paint it's like 3 bucks a quart. It's thin so you wouldn't want to paint your house with it, but thin is good when you are painting for a primitive finish. I have been using minwax stain- I had half used gallons of dark walnut and ebony in the garage. I have to go and buy a gallon this week- I plum ran out of old free stain. I like the dark walnut. I post on my facebook page requests for old gallons of latex paint. It generally turns up on my porch. Free is good. Free is great!