Garden: I Built a Bench etc.

One of the final, unrealized elements of my three-year-old backyard transformation was the construction of a bench to disguise a crawlspace hatch cover that intrudes into the patio area.  A couple of weeks ago, I tackled and completed this final chore.  In my first set of backyard plans, I'd sketched an outdoor kitchen or rolling bar-be-que trolley to serve this need.  But the hatch cover is located directly beneath the bathroom window and, smokiness issues aside, I decided that it might be distressing to use the bathroom in close proximity to the grill and nearly face-to-face with the cook.  You think?!  Anyway, I pfutzed around with several versions of the plan, most of which included a built-in trellis and stowage for a large pot in which to grow a vine to adorn the trellis, before I finally decided that simplest is best and opted to build a simple, moveable bench supplemented with hanging metal trellis panels to obscure the bathroom window.  Here's the final product:

The finished bench. Kindly ignore the obnoxious cushions--that's what you get when you shop at Target, end of season.

And this is what it was like before--not a very fair comparison as this photo was taken a long time ago--before the big patio remodel.  But, what can I say?  I was pretty good at avoiding documentation of a feature I disliked.

Bathroom window and the offending crawlspace hatch cover.

A similar picture, taken today, for comparison. (Yes, I left my hose out.)

The bench is sized to slip over the hatch cover.  The front of the bench is skirted to hide the hatch while the back is open.  The bench is easily removed for access to the crawlspace.  Dimensions of the bench were largely dependent upon those of the hatch, but I'm glad to report that the bench is both comfortable and functional.  Most of the bench (the understructure and the seating surfaces) is made with 2X6 lumber while the skirting is made of 1X4's.  Using the 2X6's for the back supports consumed a little unwanted depth and allowed me to angle the back of the bench.

To disguise the bathroom window and to provide a layer of privacy between the bathroom and the adjacent patio, I bought a couple of 2 X 5 foot Gridwall panels and hung them over the bathroom window.  In a perfect world, I guess, the left-hand edge of the bench would align with the edge of the panel, but I felt that the bench would be too massive if I made it long enough to achieve that and I value the open space near the faucet.  So I decided to celebrate functionality by choosing the most pared-down design.  

To finish up, I drilled holes in some small terra-cotta pots, planted them with trailing plants, and hung them from the Gridwall with S-hooks.  I hope that as the plants mature they will further obscure the views in and out of the bathroom.  Even now, though, I think they contribute a sense of privacy to the bathroom window.

And that's one more project scratched from the to-do list.  Go me!