How to Design and Build a Custom Tree Bench

This next HouseCall was in the town of Vista, California located about 20 miles North of San Diego and just a few miles from the Pacific Ocean. This hillside community is the home of Rick Mulebaugher and DJ Mearman. Rick and DJ love the old pine tree in their back yard. So much so, in fact, that they wanted to dress it up and spend more time under its branches. Ron was asked to help them build a tree bench surrounding this lovely tree.

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1. Create drawing:

• The bench design that Ron had visualized was circular, went all the way around the tree and would use the tree itself as a backrest.

• After drawing a sketch of the bench, Ron ran it by BJ and Rick. The design was a hexagon and was self supporting, with legs at each joint.

• To build this bench, they first needed to construct two sides of the six-sided hexagon. They would actually need to make a pair of these.

• They would then connect these two sections together with seat planks to form the complete bench.

2. Cut wood:

• They began by cutting all the seat boards. Each end needed to be cut at a 30-degree angle.

• Ron set up a power miter saw, which they would use to make all of their angle cuts. Ron, BJ and Rick selected redwood to make their bench.

• They clamped the first board onto the miter saw and set the angle for the first cut.

• After a quick lesson, BJ quickly got over her apprehension and began to enjoy using the miter saw.

• With the first row of seat boards cut, they placed them around the tree for a test fit. They wanted to make sure to have enough room for the planks to go around the tree. Ron thought there should be a pretty good distance from the edge of the bench to the tree so it would allow a little room to lean back against the tree.

• The bench seat was designed to be three planks wide. To cut the two remaining boards to the proper length, they laid all three boards side by side with ¼ inch spacers in between.

• They used a straight edge to extend the lines from the first board to the second two.

• After marking all the cuts, they laid the seat planks out on the patio to make sure they had remembered enough of their high school geometry to get it all right.

3. Build legs:

• Next, it was time to build the legs. These had a very simple design with just two 2 x 6s joined together across the top by a couple of 1 x 4s. They would need to build six of these.

• They laid the 2 x 6's down on the workbench and then placed the cross pieces on top.

• BJ used a nail gun to temporarily tack the 1 x 4s to the legs.