Space-saving and stowable benches for Theresa's primary school

In this DIY project, Theresa shows how she made beautiful and elegant sofas from custom-made sheet material. Read more about her experience below.

Description from Theresa

We built space-saving and stowable benches for the primary school. The benches can be used for sitting circles or group work and make lessons more varied. When the benches are not needed, they can be stowed away to save space.

How I made this project

We ordered custom-cut sheets online for the benches. For our project, we opted for the cheaper eucalyptus screen-printed sheets with a thickness of 18 mm. The sheets were delivered without damage and all the sheets were also cut very precisely. After that, all we had to do was sort the sheets and use a biscuit joiner to mill grooves for biscuit dowels at the joints. We then glued the individual parts together with biscuit dowels. Finally, we used screws to further reinforce the benches and screwed a flat metal connector to the middle of the underside to prevent them from breaking under constant load. The benches have now been in use for two weeks and can easily withstand a load of around 120 kg. Under working drawings you will find the material list for 12 benches, i.e. 4 sets with 3 benches of different sizes.

Dimensions of my DIY project

Large bench (w/h/d): 120.0 cm/approx. 39.0 cm/30.0 cm Medium bench (w/h/d): 114.0 cm/approx. 36.0 cm/30.0 cm Small bench (w/h/d): 108.0 cm/approx. 33.0 cm/30.0 cm