This summer Luke and I revamped a toolbench for him. I forgot to take a before picture and have searched my phone archives for one to no avail., it was this bench but in blue.  I purchased the bench from a resale for $15 and it sat in my garage unplayed with until Luke was about 18 months old. He played with it that summer periodically when we were outside but not that much. Once he turned two he started playing with it a ton when we where outside as his love of tools and construction have grown exponentially since he was 18 months old.

Before Norah was born we started working on it together. It had gotten beaten up in the garage and pulling it out in the sun to play with so we sanded it down and removed the drawer. I then sprayed painted all the parts separately before putting it back together, including the new peg board I cut to attach to the back.  I found some fun peg board accessories including the baskets at Home Depot.  We also added buckets, although we have orange ones now, to the bottom shelf for more storage so his plethora of tools would have a good landing spot.

One of the best parts about the bench is the holes. They were already in it when first purchased so I can’t take credit. ;) But they are the perfect size for play screws and give a real sense of building something.

To say he was thrilled may be a bit of an understatement! From his love of building to the torturous months it took us to finish. I cannot tell you how many times he would ask me if we could work on his tool bench. He was so excited to have it done and inside.  It now resides in our basement play area, which I have a tour of coming up shortly as we have had some changes since the last tour.

Have you built a tool bench for your littles? I would love to check it out. This was such a fun project and simple enough that Luke was able to help at almost all stages.

Thanks so much for stopping by!