Close window
Bob's Garden Bench

Repair Stories

Garden Bench - by Bob D.

All photos ©2023- Rushmoor Repair Cafe
Click any image for a larger version

So settle down with a nice hot drink if you intend reading all this lot, the short version is - "here is a bench the Rushmoor Repair Café fixed up", but the webmaster hasn't done that page yet - sorry !

This was a task that took - WAY - too long. It was eventually around eight months from beginning to end and admittedly, seven of those were me thinking about how to go about it and waiting for the weather to improve as I knew it would be an outside job. What was that job you ask, I'm not fussed if you asked or not, I'm going to tell you anyway!.

This was was a bench with great sentimental value to the owner, particularly as one of the slats had been hand carved by a person who is no longer with us so this slat HAD to stay regardless. The bench was showing it's age and sitting on it left the owner with concern about it failing and causing issues, rescuing it was definitely required.


1) The Garden bench after repair.	2) Before but after I'd done the uppermost slat.

I considered the best thing to do would be to replace all the slats and have the cast iron ends sand blasted and re-painted, but have you seen the price of hardwood these days ?. To do what I might have liked to do would have cost around £300, and having done so the bench would have far outlived it's owner. They may well have had a heart attack at the cost, I know I nearly did !. So we had a long chat and agreed to do what I could to make it safe and, hopefully, last another 20+ years without requiring the home to be sold to pay for it.

The slats were in very poor shape showing many years of weathering outdoors. A number of them had some rot and one was really gone beyond any use. Sadly even the very important slat was rather rotten at one end. With the important slat I made the executive decision to not worry about the slightly rotten end. There was enough good wood to hold and it is not in a critical weight bearing area so I didn't address that at this time. My skills at replacing the end could have made it worse so its best left alone.

All of the slats were removed a few at a time, so the bench remained stable. They were sanded down to remove all the flaking surface and prior wood treatments. They were then given three coats of teak oil to preserve them. This will need re-doing annually if not twice a year to really preserve them. This is a relatively easy task; even if not done it should be good for a fair few years.

One slat needed replacing as it was in a critical location and very rotten. Why just his one? I have no clue, all the others were relatively fine. That one slat was around £20 with postage so you can guess the price for 12 of them! It was also around 4mm thicker than the others so, thanks to the west Farnborough Man Shed (website) it was thinned to the correct size. All the bolts and screws holding everything together were rusted beyond use so I replaced with Stainless Steel ones of the same size and head.

I decided to leave the cast iron ends alone. The paint has dulled over the years but otherwise they are solid and in good condition. Stripping and re-painting them would make them look good, BUT unless they were powder coated at great cost, the shine would quickly fade and probably cause the ends to start rusting and fail. A good t-cut would likely bring them back to life. The issue with this is that due to their ornate nature it would take many hours of work and likely still dull down within a couple of years. As a volunteer for the Rushmoor Repair Café, who has a 9-5 type job, sadly this was outside of the time I could justify being away from my family.

The final result is a bench that I hope the owner can sit on safely, and look at without shame, for many years to come.[Back to the top]

Close window - Bob's Garden Bench.