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I had updated our mud area a couple of years by adding wood slats to our bench, giving it a farmhouse look. Two years later, the wood has settled and gaps were formed between the wood slats. It was one thing on my “summer to-do list” to try to fix!

Before:

Some of the gaps were almost 1/3″ wide! I did a lot of research, and most people said either to a) cut small pieces of wood to fill the gap, or b) use wood filler to fill the gaps. The problem with the wood filler was that the gaps were a little wider than what is recommended for the wood filler.

I decided to get this wood filler on Amazon. It came in a walnut color, which was close to the stain color on the bench.

What I liked about this was that I could squeeze the wood filler into the cracks. For the wider cracks, I squeezed the wood filler in (it would fall down deeper into the crack), let it dry, and then did another layer. I repeated this until the filler was level with the top of the wood piece.

Once I felt like all the cracks were filled pretty well, I let the wood filler dry for about 4 hours. I got some medium-strength sand paper and sanded the wood filler so it was smooth.

I re-stained the wood pieces with Minwax English Chestnut. The wood filler matched fairly well, but it was a little more gray/brown than the rest of the wood. I tried using furniture blemish markers to color over some of the gray. I colored over the wood filler and then used my finger or a rag to smooth the marker out. I love how it turned out!

Before: You can see the lines of the wood filler pretty obviously.

This is before using a rag to smooth the marker out.

Here’s the final product!

It’s not perfect, but luckily we still have that “rustic farmhouse” look going for us. 🤣 However, it’s a lot better than having the big gaps!