Ken, My old bench rotted away so I thought I would make a 4 foot bench in this style. I went to a salvage store in New Bedford which has thousands and thousands of items (New England Demolition and Salvage) but no lumber. He told me to call a guy in Middleboro who had some 3 foot by 3 foot timbers about 30 feet long that he said was from a 350 year old building in Fall River. He had the 'scrap' piece 102 inches long left over from the flooring he was cutting from the timbers. I said I needed 4 feet. He said the 102 inch piece was $20 and a 4 foot piece was $20...so I ended up not wanting to waste the lumber and developed this design instead of a straight bench. One thing I have plenty of around here is stone but the thought of collecting and sorting out enough of the right size for the veneer didn't appeal to me so I ordered the beach stone. 4 bags @ $15 a bag @ Home Depot with free shipping ($41 value for the shipping; $10 and change per 40# bag). Moccasin, What a great story on that cypress. You must treasure that coffee table. The board I used was pine, I am pretty sure. The beams identical to the one my board came from were black. It didn't look painted. I think it was oxidation from a few hundred years in a mill (???) The piece was remarkably light having fully dried out in 350 years. I use a Sikkens WRO sealer and stain which was rated best by Consumer Reports. The adhesive is Titebond III which is a waterproof adhesive OK for marine use under the waterline. I don't have a table saw so I had to lay out the cuts and clamp a straight edge and cut it with a 'Skill" saw. I used 6 pocket screws on he underside of the joint along with the adhesive. Routed the edges and sanded the rough sawn wood smooth. 16 inch square by 3 1/2" deep concrete pads under the columns, 1/2 inch rebar through the pads and into the ground and the hollow of the concrete blocks, 8 inch galvanized lag screws into the bottom of the seat (2 per column) which are imbeded into type S mortar filling the concrete blocks. This bench is not going anywhere. I'm probably going to cover it for the Winter. Bernd, I have some PJM small leafed rhodies that I can divide a few plants off. I also have about 6-7 large leaf purple rhody clones from a couple of larger plants. I pruned the plants up in late Spring. Some of the lower branches had spread out and rooted themselves. On the ones that seemed to be growing upright, I cut their 'umbilical cords' to the 'mother' plant. They wilted back a little at first, but then popped right back up. Sort of a natural air layering. I will probably transplant them soon or in early Spring. I also have a real nice rhody that I successfully air layered 2 new plants off of (staying where they are), but I have several other rhody varieties that I may start some air layering on. Some are very difficult and require a lot of patience. Some are simply a matter of chopping off a branch that has rooted itself and plant it somewhere else as a new plant. Jan, Be careful what you wish for :0>. Jon

Thanks. I take the worst pictures so you can't see the cathedral ceilings. Basically a designer came up with the idea and it was like a lightbulb went on. We were kicking ourselves for picking such a tall window that wouldn't allow us to put a piece of furniture under it (like the server), had the kids balls and tennis rackets etc. in a bag in the dining room, and kept almost all of our beverages in the downstairs fridge. Now - we can keep more drinks on the same level where we eat, store the extra toys in the drawers, and it now looks like we picked the window size with the window bench in mind.

I had the cushions made, inthehollow. I can handle the throw pillows, but the cushions are beyond my skill level. They actually ended up costing about the same as the banquette itself, which I wasn't expecting. There's a good amount of storage in it. In the first picture you can see the two sliding doors on the front of the long part which open up to the entire inside. There is also a "morgue" drawer off the other end. And you can just barely see, in the picture with the table, that I had two open shelves built in too. The top one holds our phone and the chargers for the cell phones and the bottom one is for my frequently used cookbooks (the other cookbooks are behind the sliding doors but since I have to crawl under the table to access them it's not exactly convenient).

The glass appears to be designed for a steam shower. If so Vapor proofing is needed. You are approaching this backwards. The shower would be completed then a final measurement for fabrication & pricing for the custom glass. As your diagram states "Roughly $3,200".The only way to avoid the notch in the glass would be a return wall along the side of the bench to the ceiling or consider a pony wall.