Blue and blue, perfect teamwork!

Hello big world!  Recently I sat with a friend -the mosaic fiend, talking about a bench seat I wanted to make.  We scanned the oracle (Internet) for inspiration and came up with the idea for this next project.  A pallet type bench with mosaics. See here.

Mosaic and wood bench in blue hues :)

But instead of pallets I found some old bed slats from an ikea bed.  They were better because they were in a predetermined length and fully 'dressed' .  That's sanded and nice looking for you non tool types :).  In any case I set to work.  I used 8 slats from the bed and used a portion of a long piece of 2 x4 roof  lumber.  I had the roof wood because last hurricane my ceiling fell in and VOILA! I had a beautiful open beam ceiling.  The earth moves in mysterious ways... Fortunately I wasn't injured, just a bonus stack of wood and a new and beautiful view.  It makes staring at the ceiling or non ceiling a pleasure, but I digress...

For this project I needed my skill saw, drill, hammer, stain, grout, stained glass and a few brackets to stabilise the legs.







I took the slats and stacked them on top of each other so there was about an inch or so gap between them.  Three for the top two on the bottom allowing for 2 gaps in which to lay mosaics.   I decided how high I wanted the bench to be and cut 4 legs.  Next I stained the wood and labelled the bottom side with a 'B'



Once dry I assembled the top portion, stacked 3 and 2.  Then I screwed the sides to it.  I used two of the ikea slats for the sides as they were already the perfect size.  Next I cut the short end pieces from the slats and screwed them in.  Table top done!

I flipped that baby over and stuck a leg in each corner, I used 4 L brackets to keep them in place.  It was all together but it wobbled :(.   To further stabilise it I cut 2 more pieces from the roof wood, they were about 4.5 inches long.  Wide enough to keep the legs uniformly apart, that worked. Yeah!  Table complete... Two gaping holes waiting for some stained glass!

This started a big debate!!  My friend is a strong willed woman (so am I!)  My friend advised carefully planning the pattern on a separate piece of paper.  She recommended that I draw a strip the size of the gaps and lay the glass in,  as if it were the table.  Harrumph... This wasn't the way I wanted to go, it was slowing up my free flowing creative vibe...


I gave in and did it her way - so not like me :) but realistically she does know a thing about mosaics and the vision in my head was a thing of beauty.  Good thing I listened to her because she gave me the most valuable piece of advice, something I never would have considered!!!

Once we had the pattern set it was time to grout and place the pieces.  I used un-sanded grout in a grey colour.

mixes with water

 White would have been too stark.  I mixed the grout,  a little at a time, according to the instructions ('cause it hardens!) and started placing the pieces.  It didn't fit exactly as it had on the paper but it was close enough... Fantastic! I loved it :) we did one side at a time.  Her advice... DO
NOT throw the grout down the drain, don't even was your hands in the sink.  Think major plumbing bills as that stuff hardens in the pipes ... can you imagine? Would have cost a mint!!!  That certainly never occurred to me, phew!  Pays to listen to advice and take a back seat sometimes :).  On that note, another friend popped in as we were grouting and suggested the following modification to the last glasssection.  He suggested that we add a strip of wood as a filler, so we didn't have to use as much grout.  Made sense, we did that in side 2 with no ill effects, just less drying time.


Once the 2 stained glass strips were in, I wiped them with a damp sponge to remove the excess grout from the glass.  I did his several times, even used a fine sanding block to make sure all the excess was off ...ah... A thing of beauty.  Blue and more blue, reminiscent of my cricket team colours - how timely!



Tool Diva

Ps check tooldiva out on Pinterest, follow my latest projects!