Project Nehemiah: Benches

Today is Australia Day woohoo! We are called the lucky country and it sure is a blessing to live here. 

I spent the day working on Project Nehemiah with Esther. Our job is to revamp things and today we decided clean up the kid's outdoor benches. 

As you can see they are peeling and very old. I wanted to take off these hooks as well because when the kids sit/play in this area, they often knock their heads into it. 

Anyway, Esther and I are pretty hands on but we didn't really know how to restore benches ^^"
So we headed to Bunnings, which I realized is a great way of celebrating Australia Day. 

You can't get more Aussie than going to Bunnings Warehouse and getting a sausage sizzle. 

In Bunnings we got some pretty good advice and bought some sandpaper and paint. We were arguing about which colour to choose, but in the end we went with this reddish brown colour. It's interesting how memory works, because Esther was sure this colour would match on the wooden steps. However I was sure that it was too red hahaha. In the end I gave in and when we came back and opened the can, I was right and it was too bloody red. Anyway, it turned out pretty nice so I can't complain. 

Our first job was to sand off the benches. Esther brought her electric sander while I manually scrapped bits off. There were four benches to go through, so it took a little while. 

Then we moved them inside for painting. 

Thank God I think we did a solid job :) It took us quite a few hours, so we listened to a sermon when we were painting.  We painted four coats just to be sure hahaha 

 "And they said, Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for this good work." Nehemiah 2: 18b