It looks like a park bench. You know, those long chairs in the park where people too drunk to get home usually sleep the night off. And, well, it can play that part. Except, the bench you can build with the Hopkins Flip Top BenchTable Kit actually comes with an integrated tabletop that you can use to turn it into functional picnic table.
That’s right, you’re building a bench that can transform into a picnic table, so you can keep it in bench form when you just need extra seats in the backyard, all while transforming into a bench-and-table combo when you want to enjoy a couple of beers with your buddies on a Friday night. Seriously, this is a perfect furniture for patios, backyards, and other outdoor sections of the house, making it quite the fun project to keep you busy for the weekend.
The Hopkins Flip Top BenchTable Kit is a DIY kit containing a pair of brackets that serve as the frame for the furniture project you’re building, as well as all the hardware needed to complete the build. You will need to purchase nine pieces of lumber (2x4s), which you will use as the seat, the backrest, the tabletop, and the support. From looking at the picture, this looks like a pretty straightforward build, requiring you to just push the lumber in their designated slots and screw them in place. Yes, you’ll need a screwdriver for this job and it’s preferably powered because manually drilling holes into that wood isn’t going to be fun. By the way, you’ll also need a wrench (for securing the bolts) and, if you’re cutting the wood yourself, a saw.
The outfit recommends using six-foot long 2x4s to ensure everything is stable, although you can go as long as you like, provided you add some support down the middle of the bench because this thing will probably sag when you use boards that are too long. According to the outfit, the maximum they’ll recommend without adding extra support is eight feet.
When finished, the Hopkins Flip Top BenchTable Kit gets you an awesome functional bench that you can use to give your legs a rest when doing household chores in the backyard. Even better, it has a backrest that’s designed to flip over into a horizontal position, turning it into a picnic table and bench, so you can enjoy a proper snack while resting your legs after a long day of gardening. Pair it with a second unit to get a full-sized picnic table with benches on either side, giving you a proper patio setup that you built with your own hands.
Construction is heavy-gauge structural resin for the brackets, so this should hold up to whatever weight you can fit onto that bench. When assembled, the finished outdoor furniture piece stands 34 inches high in bench mode and 31 inches high in table mode, with a seat height of 17.5 inches.
Want one? The Hopkins Flip Top BenchTable Kit is available now.
- The flip top bench table easily converts from bench to table and back in seconds