Garden Love Seat

This was my first bench project. It was inspired by a much smaller bench I saw in a magazine and which only had the seat part mosaicked and no armrests. I planned it all out with cinderblocks that we later filled in with rebar and cement and then screwed cement fiberboard to the seat back and flat parts.�My husband helped immensely with the fabrication. That is usually my least favorite part. �If we were to do it again, we would probably try to get some curve or tilt in the part where your back touches the bench as the 90 degree angle is pretty stiff for relaxing on. The circular brick patio in front of it was a project my husband and I�did earlier, so I’m glad we had the bench curve around it like they were meant for each other.

I had two recycled aluminum sea creature trivets which I wrapped wire around to give extra sticking power and then used exterior grade thinset to attach everything. When my sister remodeled her kitchen she had a bunch of left over granite tiles and some marble as well. These I smashed and layed out�for the seat and the top part along with tumbled stones, broken plates and glass gems. I used a grout that said it was teal, but came out more like an ocean blue.

Be sure to use frost-proof exterior grade tiles and plates and other tesserae in your garden mosaics�so they don’t pop off in freezing or extreme heat!