My Favorite Home Project | Our DIY Modern Farmhouse Hall Tree

Need a spot by the front door to get the family organized?

Create a hall tree style bench with storage that functions as a helpful drop off zone! We are coming up on our 5 year anniversary of moving into our home, and today, I’m sharing one of the projects we completed ourselves that’s made the most impact on our front entryway – this DIY modern farmhouse hall tree project.

First impressions are everything, even at home!

Our bench hall tree is both functional and stylish, and everyone who visits notices it right away. We live in the desert in a stucco style home, and molding details like this aren’t super common here in Arizona. This adds a nice, unexpected touch. I love that this hall tree is unique and is built in, so it looks like it was here all along.

My husband has many talents, and carpentry is one of them!

We tend to spend weekends remodeling. It’s our hobby, and we enjoy completing home improvement projects. He takes the lead on the building, while I contribute to the design aspect and paint and help out where I can. We have added lots of wood molding details to our home, which I think makes it feel so custom and stylish.

Considering a hall tree project? Here’s what we did.

We mocked up our own design by first using masking tape to create a visual of where the seat would go, where the top shelf would go, and the design of the molding inside the hall tree on the wall. All of our wood materials are from The Home Depot, including the plywood, trim, hooks, corbels, and paint.

The bench is a plywood rectangular box 20 inches high and 20 inches wide. The base is built from 2x4s. You’ll see there are three vertical center supports and a horizontal shelf inside to create shoe storage.

There are two large wood corbels installed on each side of the bench and three smaller corbels installed for the top shelf. The corbels really give it that built-in look. Large oil-rubbed bronze coat hooks provide much-needed hanging storage to keep items organized.

Once painted, I love how all the wood details come together to look uniform as if it’s all one piece. All the molding in our home is painted with Behr paint in Pure White.

Don’t forget the bench cushion!

For my bench cushion, I glued a piece of 3-inch foam to the top of the same-sized piece of plywood! You can buy foam by the yard at the fabric store. Then we covered it with a piece of upholstery fabric and used a staple gun to attach the fabric underneath at the bottom of the plywood. We’ve actually replaced the fabric recently to this black and white fabric that I love!

What a remarkable before and after!

This wall went from super boring to updated and functional. It’s been years since we completed this bench, but I still walk by this space every day and enjoy it. We’ve since painted the walls a light gray, which brightens the room nicely! What do you think?

Not into DIY carpentry? No worries!

You can use our hall tree as inspiration and hire an expert to build it, or you can purchase a similar piece of furniture.

Here are some farmhouse-inspired hall trees to consider:

• Halstead Hall Tree via Wayfair.com
• Prepac Shoe Storage Hall Tree via Amazon.com
• Better Homes & Gardens Crossmill Hall Tree Bench via Walmart.com

Lina (lina@hip2behome.com) loves cooking new recipes, thrift store shopping, and DIY home decor projects.

See how I built this rustic wood centerpiece for under $11!