This is just a photo post about building a bench.  It is lacking in serious details because I am not generally big into details, but it has lots of pretty pictures!
If you have specific questions, like you want to build your own, either comment below or shoot me an email.
Total actual work time on this bench, for me, was about 15 hours spread across 4 days of work because…well….glue needs to dry.
You could do this quicker if you used boards that were straight or knew what you were doing…but I don’t see the fun in that.

Cutting a mortis in one of the leg panels.

The legs were actually three pieces of wood around 4.5″ wide glued together.  This allowed the two mortises to be spread across the three boards, which was supposed to an easier method.  I think it may have been easiest to just use my plunge router and the appropriate bit, but I really love the dado blades on the table saw, so I don’t care.

I used a biscuit joiner to join the stretchers and the top.

You probably don’t have to use this tool in this setting.  Just gluing things together would probably have been fine.  But….basically I have one of these so why not use it?  Plus, it doesn’t increase build time by much at all (maybe an extra 20 minutes total) and it really strengthens things up.  Overkill?  Yeah, so what?

Watching glue dry on the stretcher and the top.

Not exactly a perfect fit, but don’t sweat it, that’s what wood chisels are for!

I tend to write all over the work piece in pencil.  This basically forces me to sand things thoroughly, otherwise I would completely half-ass the sanding step and really, that should be whole-assed.

left side for working, right side for holding stuff.

Here is the base, which is all Bradford Pear.

All the white on the tenons is glue that I wiped around with a “clean” rag when I was wiping off the excess.  Remember that half-ass thing I was talking about….

Sanding down the pegs that hold the top in place

Finished!

A different view of the top

Injury report for this project:
Sliced the top off a knuckle with a wood chisel.
Really, that’s not too bad.  Thanks to my hands being nearly frozen and the chisels being super sharp, I barely felt it.

All in all, it was a very rewarding project and really it wasn’t difficult.  I had never ever used a biscuit joiner or dado blade (on my table saw), so this project included techniques that were totally new to me.  I bumbled my way through it and so can you!
let me know if you have any questions.