A while ago, I accidentally cracked this cheap shoe shelf thing in our laundry room. Not enough to ruin it, but I head it “give” a bit. I decided to build a new one that I could sit on. Since the location of the shoe shelf is the spot where I put on my shoes or boots before heading into the garage or outside to do lawn work.

Finished Picture and YouTube Video

Material Details

The parts for the bench all came from a single 8/4 piece of ash that was about 6 1/2″ wide and 8 foot long. I was able to resaw and book-match the pieces to get the full 12″ depth. The bench ended up being about 26″ wide and 17″ tall.

Box Joints

After getting the book matched panels flattened with my drum sander, I cut the top and both sides to final length. From there I used my Incra I-Box jig to cut finger joints in the top and sides. I wanted a joint that was really strong that could take the abuse of being sat on.

Shelf

I needed to incorporate a shelf below the top for two reasons. One, for storage and two for strength. To attach the shelf to the sides, I used a shallow mortise/dado. Then, the shelf gets a small tenon/tongue. I cut the dado, in the sides, with my router table and a 3/8″ router bit. The dado is stopped on the front side, so you can’t see the joint. Then I had to determine the exact length of the shelf piece before cutting then tenon/tongue. Next, I took the shelf piece back to my router table and used a large router bit to remove the waste material. I could slowly sneak up on the perfect fit by raising the router bit little by little. I also had to sneak up on tenon length by sliding the router fence back a little at a time. The top piece with finger joints was the perfect length to ensure the shoulder to shoulder dimension was correct. The distance between the finger joints has to match the shoulder-to-shoulder distance for all surface to end up flush.

Baseboard Scribe

I wanted the shelf to fit tightly to the wall, so I had to scribe the legs around the baseboard and base shoe. I started by using the actual pieces, but this got pretty clunky. So, I made a small template and scribed that. Then I just traced the line onto the actual pieces. Behind the old shelf was really dusty and linty. Don’t judge. I cleaned it up before putting the new one in place.

Sanding, Finishing, Gluing, Finishing

I decided to pre-finish the internals of the shelf since they are so hard to get into after glued up. After sanding the piece with my drum sander and by hand, I applied 3 coats of White Milk paint and 2 coats of polyurethane. Unfortunately, this allowed one of the board to cup a bit, but I was able to clamp it back out. Speaking of clamping, I used a lot of clamps and glue to get this thing together.

After it was out of the clamps, I sanded the finger joints flush and sanded all the surface smooth. Then 3 coats of milk paint and 3 coats of polyurethane. While the shelf looks really plain and simple, it really has some nice joinery to make it strong.