Bench for master bathroom

[Bill Conerly]

Here’s my latest project, with a question at the bottom of this post.

After a remodel, we ended up with some open space in the master bathroom, but no place to sit down and put on shoes and socks. (Master bath opens into a walk-in closet where shoes are kept.)

I found some anigre wood for a decent price. I wasn’t familiar with it, but it’s an African hardwood with nice tight grain. Got two boards one inch thick.

I wanted a clean design and came up with this. It feels solid and I like the look. It may not be obvious from the pictures, but the legs are slanted out 15 degrees toward the ends of the bench, in addition to being slanted front-back.

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Question: the one thing I would want to do differently if I ever made another was the lower cross pieces connecting the legs at each end, shown in the third picture with red marking. (Would you call these cross stretchers?) These pieces look bulky to my eyes, relative to the rest of the bench. The cross pieces serve two purpose: keep each pair of legs from splaying apart from each other, and connect each pair of legs to the stretcher, so that one pair of legs doesn’t splay apart from the other pair.

My ideas to eliminate/replace the cross-stretchers:

1) Just glue the stretcher to the legs, resulting in one square inch of surface mating, times two sides, at each end. The tops of the legs are well secured under the seat, set between two cross pieces. But still, I think this isn’t enough glue surface for the forces near the bottom.

2) Put a 1x1 cross piece flush with the legs, and have the stretcher rest on the cross piece. My challenge would be connecting the cross piece to the legs. Mortise & tenon? The mortise in a slanted piece would have an air pocket at one end, but maybe that’s OK. And the tenon would be fairly small. But there would be plenty of connection with the stretcher, and the tops of the legs are really solidly attached to the seat.

3) Make a cross piece same dimensions as the legs (1 x 2 ½ ) and butt joint flush with legs, or maybe mortise and tenon, with stretcher on top of the cross piece.

I’d appreciate any ideas you have.

[Jim Becker]

That's a very nice project result!

For something like this that I made awhile back for the guest bath in our previous home (and now used in our master bedroom at the foot of the bed), I chose to make the the lower level functional storage for towels, etc., rather than minimizing it. My design was different than yours as the legs were not splayed, etc., but the general idea was similar.

[Ben Ellenberger]

I like it! The simplest way to minimize those cross pieces visually would be to finish them with a chamfer. If they are 1” thick I would cut the top 1/2” back at 45 degrees. You could also cut them shorter, so they aren’t flush with the outside of the leg. In that case I would leave them short by 1/2” on each side.

[Bill Carey]

Another tactic might be to use loose tenons and have the stretchers co-planer with the legs. Kind of make them go away all together.

[Bill Conerly]

Ben and Bill, thanks for your thoughts. Both good ideas.