Kitchen Nook Benches & an IKEA Table Hack | ORC Week 4

Hi again! Welcome to the One Room Challenge, Week 4. This week we worked on assembling the Kitchen Nook Benches and attempting a DIY Kitchen Table. The weather has been so nice and I just love the sunlight that this area gets! Read on for all of the updates…

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Let’s start with the Kitchen Nook Benches. I shared an inspiration photo in this post of a custom built-in wicker bench. Ahhh… it is just so pretty! I knew that a custom built-in bench was likely not in the cards for this refresh, so I tried to be scrappy. And it paid off! I found these wicker benches. They don’t have a back to them. But, that is fine because I don’t think that backs would work with the lower window sills anyway. I had grand plans to float the top of the benches to the wall (and save the steel frames for another project). R thinks that the wall likely isn’t sturdy enough. I tend to agree with him. And the steel frames are actually quite nice! The price is amazing, and they even come with comfortable bench cushions! You can bet I’ll be scotch guarding them before a certain two children are allowed on them. I can even imagine semi-lounging on them, reading a book and enjoying the view.

Moving on to the DIY IKEA Kitchen Table. When we first moved in to the cottage, we purchased an inexpensive IKEA table (shown in its original form- sort of- we stained it). It has done the trick for a few years. However, we have now lived in the beach cabin, held family birthdays here, and had renters. And we have concluded that a longer and wider table with more seating would be ideal for larger groups.

Of course, the measurements of the table needed to be exact for the space and for the bench seating. Two weeks ago, I mentioned that this dining table is almost, almost the perfect table with oh so close measurements. The one thing that we weren’t sure about was having the legs on the corners with a slide in bench seat.

Our current IKEA table has the legs on the corners. However, a quick internet search for IKEA table hacks, gave us this tutorial from East Coast Creative for a farmhouse table. By making our IKEA table into a farmhouse table, the legs would not be on the corners due to the overhang. We were also able to adjust the lengths of the planks to make it fit our space perfectly. Of course, we didn’t follow the directions exactly and ended up making it our own. The plans were a great jumping off point though!

Moving on to the stain… We decided to go with a walnut stain. Originally, we had wanted to go with a lighter stain to coordinate with the wood in the windows. However, the grain in the pine just didn’t look quite right with the lighter stain. I was also so so happy to find ta stain/poly combination due to my halfway-through-projects-fatigue- haha! It had the stain and poly in one so I really took my time and didn’t rush since I knew it was the final step! After reading multiple DIY blog posts, we also knew that using wood conditioner was a must before applying the stain.

I’m still waiting for the benches to come back into stock to order two more. And then pillows. And we need to hang the lighting. But first… R keeps asking about greenery. I think I’m just going to go cut some branches so that we can check that one off the list/we don’t need to keep talking about it. 

So, come back next week to see the greenery! And the lighting too 🙂 Oh, and after I took these photos, R rubbed a quick coat of tung seed oil over the table, so you can check that out too. And, as always, don’t forget to check out the amazing progress of all the ORC participants here.