Slat Wall Part 4: The Bench

And now onto our final installment on the slat wall installation! The wall was done but to maximize storage and have a sitting space to put shoes on (and, sadly, to leave clutter on), we needed a bench. D was originally planning on something involving plywood with Forbo (basically, a fancier linoleum, available in lots of fun colors, on top of plywood), but backed off when he realized that the Forbo itself was the cost of the plywood (essentially doubling the cost) and applying it would be troublesome. He asked the lumber store if they could find sapele plywood (the same type of wood as the slats). They said no, but they could make it themselves, by purchasing a giant roll of sapele veneer and gluing it to plywood (with big machines that make it look much nicer than we could do). So, we went with that. 

We ordered enough  to build the entire bench out of the sapele, including the doors. We had not actually settled on a bench design when we ordered all the wood, which was risky, so we made sure to order with enough buffer to design as we went. The design came from a bunch of constraints:

1. No nails or screws
2. No exposed plywood edges
3. Buildable by D, who is not a fine furniture maker
4. Sliding doors (swinging doors could interfere with our front door), which also would require flush hardware
5. At least four sections--one for each person's shoes

D never modeled the entire design in Fusion360, his CNC design software. He only used it for the side panels, door "handles," and doors, cut from the CNC machine. The rest he cut by hand with the track saw. 

The sides were the most intricate part (shown below in the digital model):

The lower slot is for the plywood floor of the bench (we wanted it a few inches off the ground for easier cleaning underneath). The high slot for the top of the bench. The tiny holes are for the pins to hold interior shelves. Here it is for real:

Test fitting the lower slot on the plywood:

The top and bottom sheets of plywood needed to be trimmed (to cover the not-so-attractive inside). The easy thing would be to glue some veneer on - but we wanted to avoid doing that because the veneer would eventually peel and chip. Also any hard hits on the edge would result in the veneer cracking. So instead D cut a 3/4 inch wide strip of sapele for the entire length. Which was pretty fiddly to do with the track saw. Here are two pieces of plywood: the lower one has the sapele hardwood edge glued (and clamped) on. The top board, just to the right of the clamp, is still awaiting the edge. 

Done:

Now for the terrifying step where D CNC'ed out dados (those lines) for the internal dividers. Somehow he didn't mess it up.

Now it was ready for test fitting:

You can see that the bench is designed to have three sections. Also that this project is straining the limits of our bike garage / workshop.

D just used glue and clamps to attach the side panels and top/bottom panels.

Afte glueing both sides on, the internal dividers were cut out and slotted in (again being held with wood glue). At this point it was sturdy(ish) enough to be carried into the house for the finishing steps. It definitely was wiggly.

D made the sliding door mechanism by cutting slots in the top and bottom of the bench and installing nylon washers into the door. The washers were screwed into the back of the door with a lot of measuring and hope.

Two doors installed! The door "handles" were slotted with the CNC into the edge/finishing pieces of the doors. 

The last steps involved a fair amount of hand cutting to cover all of the exposed plywood edges with sapele strips. 

D would say that some parts show his .... not so fabulous precision (which he did say, in a draft of this post). J would say it looks amazing and no one would ever notice these things in our beautiful finished bench. Wood glue + sapele sawdust was periodically used to fill in some spots.

But at a normal viewing distance it looks pretty nice! (Again, D's words. J thinks it looks professional and amazing.)

Without further ado, the final product (which we actually shared back in December for our not-actually-500th post):

We use the left and right boxes for our regular shoes (one shelf each) and the middle box for tall boots, with no dividing shelf in the middle. Do the kids leave their shoes on the floor? Absolutely! And their coats and other junk on the bench, rather than the hooks? Yup! But we do get a pretty amazing built-in room divider and a place to quickly throw things before guests come over.