This was a great collaboration between a designer and an engineer, me being the designer and my dad the engineer. I recently moved from a small condo to a single family house with a nice wrap around porch. My father is recently retired and believes idle hands are the devil's playthings so I thought this would be a good project to undertake. Full disclosure, we built this in my father's wood shop and needed to purchase no tools.
I took on this project because every couch I looked at was either very expensive or did not meet my tastes. When searching for a design online this one really stood out to me for a couple of reasons, the first being the design looked great, the process was easy to follow, and the construction methods seemed pretty solid. The only drawback I found was that standard lumber at a big box store had to many knots and shied away from it for the slats and arms and went with 'select' grade pine, this change increased the price. It also took some convincing my dad to use big box store lumber as most of it is warped and knotty, he wanted me to purchase cypress from a high end mill so that it could truly weather the elements. His theory is a good one, you are putting a lot of work into building this why not spend a $100-200 more and get a very long lasting wood? My answer, my wife will kill me if I spend $500 on this project!!!! In the end this was much easier than I thought it would be. The chop saw made quick work of the cut list, and the Krieg jig worked great. Painting took the longest, I used a power sander to sand it down. I then used left over wood conditioner and the shellac primer. This took about 4-5 hours. After the primer dried I sanded out a few areas where the primer had pooled. Using a paint sprayer we sprayed at least 3 coats probably more like 5 coats of white exterior semi-gloss. This took about 3 hours. I attached the back to seat after I painted them.
Modifications:
I reduced the overall depth in order to accomodate a 24" cushion instead of the 27.5". I researched online buying foam and fabric as suggested, but this in my opinion made the project too costly. I found outdoor cushions at Ikea which work very well with the style and layout. They are not super cushy but do the trick for a 1/3 of the price.
I also added heavy duty rubber furniture slides to the bottom to prevent any marring to my deck and hopefully reduce moisture wicking up the end grain.
Costs:
Lumber and screws: $190
Cushions: $120
Paint: I used an expensive shellac for the primer $42.00
and exterior grade latex for $25, plus a few paint bushes $10.00
Grand Total: $387
Timing:
1. Acquiring lumber - 1 hour
2. Measuring, cutting and labeling - 1.5 hours
3. Krieg drilling - 3 hours
4. Assembling - 3 hours
5. Sanding - 1 hour
6. Conditioning and Priming - 4 hours
7. Painting with sprayer - 3 hours
Total 16.5 hours
