DIY Quick and Easy Entryway Bench: Step-by-Step Guide

Does anyone else have an awkward area you have no idea how to fill? For us, it’s the dead space walkway right as you enter our front door. Great. Not the very back guest room where few people ever go, it’s the glaringly obvious spot when you enter our humble abode and walk right into the back of a couch.

Because of the layout of our living room, it’s kind of unavoidable to have the couch where it is. It really does look good and fit well in every way except for the weird entryway area it creates.

Luckily for us, we recently had a free day and hadn’t done a project in a while so whipped up this quick and easy entryway bench.

It was actually a pretty fun idea – we wrote out a list of quick projects that we already had the materials for or could fashion out of scrapwood and put them on little pieces of paper in a mason jar, then picked out this little bench as our project of the day!

For us it was completely free because we had the wood leftover from our outdoor table, and we already had the paint and stain. We used the tutorial from The Midkiff House on Instagram – she’s got it saved to her story highlights.

Head to her account for the full rundown – it’s such a quick and easy DIY entryway bench (even though it has angle cuts that generally stress us out).

Tools & Materials

• 2×10 cut at 48-inches (this will be the top seat part)
• (4) 2×4 cut at 15 ¾ inch (these will be the outside parts of the leg structure)
• (2) 2×4 cut at 8.5 inches (these will be the bottom part of the leg structure)
• (2) 2×4 cut at 3.5 inches (these are the top part of the leg structure that connect to the seat)
• 2-inch wood screws
• Paint or stain – we used leftover paint from our fireplace which was Dark Secret by Behr and wood stain from our Yahtzee dice which was (Early American)
• Polycrylic

How we did it:

Make your cuts

First you’ll make your cuts with a miter saw.

All of the angles are 10-degree cuts which makes it easy – you’ll just put your 2×4 on the saw with the 3.5-inch side flat and then tilt your miter saw to 10 degrees. (It’s the one where the saw itself turns on its side a little, rather than the one that spins it left or right).

Cut the 10 degree cuts on the shorter 8.5 and 3.5-inch pieces away from each other, so that the smaller tapered part of the cut is on the top of each piece.

On those bigger 15.75-inch pieces, it’ll be the opposite so the angle cuts are in the same direction.

Assemble your entryway bench legs

Once the leg pieces for your entryway bench are all cut, line them up and do a dry run.

Lay down the long 15.75-inch pieces side by side on the ground (with the longer 3.5-inch side upright) and put the little 3.5 inch piece between them at the top (with the smaller tapered end of the 3.5-inch piece at the top) and fit the 8.5-inch piece between the legs at the bottom (the same way, with the tapered angle upwards).

Screw everything together

We were painting our legs black, so covering up the screws was a lot easier than had we been staining. We altered Emily’s plans a little and did pocket holes on the bottom pieces so they’d be less obvious.

Flip the whole thing upside down and drill a pocket hole going from the 8.5-inch piece into the 15.75-inch piece on each end of each set of legs. You could also just drill a screw from the longer 15.75-inch piece into the 8.5-inch piece, but this makes the finish look a little cleaner.

Next, we drilled some screws into the top 3.5-inch pieces, but these were a little too small for pocket holes, so we just straight up screwed them into the sides through the outside leg pieces.

Paint or stain, or connect to the seat

At this point, we painted the legs and stained the top piece because they were going to end up being different colors. We didn’t want to connect them then paint and stain them and risk it being messy, so it was much easier this way. We didn’t get any photos of this step, probably because we were absolutely dripping in sweat painting outside in June.

If you’re doing it all one color, you can connect the legs to the seat part first then paint or stain it all at once – up to you. To connect the legs to the base of your entryway bench, just flip the seat part upside down and measure six inches in from each end. This is where your legs are going to go.

Just sink a screw through the underside of the legs and into the seat to secure it, just make sure you use a screw that’s not too long or it’ll go the whole way through and show on the top. No bueno.

Seal and you’re done

Give it all a good coat of polycrylic to seal it (and make it easier to clean) and you’re done! You’ve probably only invested a couple of hours at this point and now have some furniture that looks like it took wayyy longer.

This entryway bench tutorial was so quick and easy to follow we think we’re going to make another bench for our guest room and mix it up with a different stain.

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