Outdoor Patio Bench

I'm over winter already. I know we don't have much of a winter here in Alabama, but I'm really more of a Spring kind of girl. I love coming home in the afternoons and having a few hours of daylight left to sit on the patio and watch the pups play in the back yard.

This past summer, my FIL and I built this beauty for my back patio. It was my first real woodworking project and I'm pretty pumped at the result. I can't believe I am just now getting around to post about it.

For this bench, we mixed a few plans we found online to come up with our own design. We started
with this tutorial from Not Just A Housewife but I wanted arms on my bench. When we ran across this plan from Yellow Wood we added the arms.  I wish I could have done a tutorial on this project but honestly, we changed plans and directions so much that I wouldn't know where to start!

Here is a photo before it was stained. For the stain, I used a Minwax stain in American Walnut. It was one of those stain/poly combos and it worked perfectly for this project. 

Here's to longer days and warmer weather so I can once again enjoy my bench!!