Entry Bench

I'm obsessed with Sarah Richardson.

There, I confessed it! I love everything she does. I find her mixture of pattern and color amazing and I love that she makes everything look beautiful while being functional. When she did her farmhouse I thought to myself...THAT is my dream house!!! Every. Single. Room.

I was most in love with the bathrooms, but the mudroom/entry was a very close second. I loved the fabric for the curtains, the fun red closet doors, the pine paneling. I most loved this old bench though.

Everything is just so wonderful in my opinion! That bench started me on a hunt though. I was determined I could find one somewhere.

That didn't work out so much. I looked for a year. A YEAR! Nothing, no benches anything close to like that were to be found in my little chunk of Texas, nor in my mother-in-law's little chunk of Oklahoma. So, I brain stormed with my father and we put together a plan to build one. I wasn't going to be too expensive but I was going to have to wait for a while. My father is building a custom kitchen and his shop was completely full! So wait I would.

While waiting for personal furniture, I'm working on other furniture. My friend Merideth had some chairs she wanted me to work on (to be blogged about at a later date) and I was a busy bee, doing one at a time as they still needed to sit in their home. While I had one of her chairs I set it in my entryway all completed and it hit me what I truly wanted for the space...

I thought Merideth's chair would look great as a bench under all my frames.

Thus I began my search for windsor benches. This was an even less fruitful search than the farmhouse bench. All of the ones that I found affordable were too short and wouldn't work in the space. The ones that were true antiques cost more than my kids bathroom remodel! I started to lose hope and pull the building plans back out again. 

Then one Saturday, with both kids complaining and trailing after me, I went into one of my favorite local shops. There, in a corner booth buried under another bench and several other pieces of furniture was this bench.

YES! Called the husband...may have begged a little, and he bought it for me. I was a happy girl!

Then I got to work

Painting spindles is not my favorite job for sure, but you gotta do what you gotta do!

Then came distressing and waxing and all that fun stuff...on spindles.

But oh how yummy it turned out! I love it so much.

So a big thank you goes out to my wonderful husband for buying me a bench and putting an end to my two year search!