Church Pew:

I don't think I ever really intentionally stop at Garage Sales.  I usually have kiddo's with me, and so getting out to look through a garage sale isn't ideal.  I was driving home Saturday morning though, and saw a garage sale from the same house I bought my bar chairs from.  

I decided to stop, and to my surprise, I saw 2 Church pew benches!!!

Ever since a friend of mine told me about how she has a Church pew in her house, I instantly fell in love with the idea!

I've been searching Craigslist, and antique stores, etc.   

They were always so expensive in my opinion.  On average, $300 a piece!

So when I saw these, I quickly said I wanted them!!!...especially when I saw someone else looking at them. ;)

They were being sold as a set for $50.00, but I only really needed one.  I went ahead and bought both of them, and figured I could sell the one after re-doing them.

Once I started taking apart the upholstery, I saw that there were 4 different layers of fabric, plus the foam!  It was all filled with dirt and dust, so I'm glad I decided to take it all off rather than recover over it!

The very bottom layer of fabric (number 1) looks exactly like something you would see on a Church pew bench, which makes me think these were definitely at one time pews!

So after ripping off the 4 layers of fabric, and taking out the gazillion staples, it looked like this...

I sprayed it down with Rust-oleum Universal Satin Black Paint and Primer...

Once that was dried, I brushed on some metallic paint...

...then "distressed" it with my sander...

...to give it this look!

I haven't quite decided where I'm going to put it, or even if I'm going to sell the one.  Since we're knocking out our stairs, I'll definitely have room now to use it as an Entryway bench!  We'll see!

~ Jenny xoxo