Double ÄPPLARÖ Bench for potting bench

Materials: ÄPPLARÖ bench

I have been looking for a nice potting bench at an affordable price for months (in Italy nobody sells this sort of garden furniture). When I finally decided to build my own, I stepped into the ÄPPLARÖ series of garden furniture and thought at first I could accommodate the ÄPPLARÖ service tray to fit…but it had wheels which I didn’t want and it was too short (80 cm) so I would have had to place 2 of them side by side (which couldn’t be done with wheels getting in the way).

Instead I bought 2 low benches which are 44 cm high and 114 cm long. Perfect.

I built the first as instructed and on the second one I just moved to the back the center bar holding the legs together (the bar is normally placed in the middle of the legs bar – in my pic you can see where the original holes are inside the right side leg bar); I had to re-drill the holes on the back legs of course. In this way I could use the lower bench countertop to store things.

Then, before placing the hacked upper bench on the lower one I cut the upper bench rubber feet to perfectly match the lower countertop and secured the upper part to the lower countertop by placing “L” brackets in the inner side of the legs. Very simple. To refine my hack I’m planning to cut a rectangular hole in the countertop (which is now at 87 cm height) and place a TROFAST storage box so it can serve as a built in potting soil container.

The ÄPPLARÖ wall panel with 1 shelf is an optional addition but I think the whole thing works well together.

Total price: 119.80 euros for the 2 benches 3 euros for the “L” brackets.