The first thought we had for the mud area that we built at my sister’s was how to configure the bench part. I am all about easy, inexpensive, and practical, so I immediately thought about using a 3 cube shelf for the bench. I love using cube shelves in my home, and thought one would be a great way to create a bench while having compartments below.
I picked up a cube shelf from Target for $25.
The dimensions of this shelf are:
Overall Width: 12.24 inches
Overall Height: 35.94 inches
Overall Depth: 11.73 inches
This size worked well, because the space we had would only fit about a 3-foot wide mud area. They do make taller and longer cube shelves, if you’re interested in adding one to your home!
We purchased two 8 foot 1x4s to put on top of the shelf, and stained them with Minwax Provincial.
We cut them to be 38″ wide, so they would hang over the edge about an inch on each of the 36″ width. We used three of these boards, and glued them down on top with gorilla glue.
Since the shelf was only ~12 inches tall, you’d have to have some really strong quad muscles to sit down and get up on a bench that height. 😉 Ideally, we wanted the shelf to be about 4 inches taller. Home Depot had some pedestal feet, but they ran about $13 each ($52 total?!).
We got creative… we decided to use 2×4 pieces of wood, cut them to the 4″ height, paint them white, and gorilla glue them to the bottom of the shelf! We let these dry for awhile, and then we set the bench down very carefully, so unnecessary pressure wouldn’t be put on the feet.
We used the brackets that came with the shelf to attach it to the wall… and, that was it! We now have our cute little “bench”, for less than $40!
It's Hammer Time 
Good look!!
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