Outdoor Workbench Redesign

As part of the Deck Furniture II project (circa 2013), I built an outdoor workbench. It had cabinet doors and shelves to allow storing things without them being exposed to rain. I did a fair about of caulking and silicone sealing to prevent water from getting inside the cabinet. Alas, nature is a hard thing to prepare for.

After 4 years of being outside, the entire interior of the cabinet had rotted and mildew-ed out. It seemed to be much more effective in not letting moisture get out of the cabinet than it was at preventing moisture from getting inside. The frame was made of pressure treated wood and the surfaces of cedar and ipe wood. All of these components were actually still in fine shape. The weak link was the 1/2" plywood I used to create the cabinet compartment. This was supposed to be treated wood for outdoor use, but it did not hold up and wound up a rotted mess.

I disassembled the benches down to the underlying wood frame and stripped off all the rotted plywood. I found a few ant colonies had taken up residence in here.

I was not going to attempt to counteract nature and instead went with a design that embraced nature. I would re-use the cedar and ipe planks, but have no backing so water could just seep through and I would have shelves, but they would be mostly open on all sides. There would be no doors.

I bought some thick waterproof plastic mesh to serve as the shelves so they would not rot and would let water through. I had to re-cut some of the cedar to adapt it to the new design, but all the ipe wood I was able to re-use as is.