Shower Benches for Small Dummies

These plans won't build this shower bench

We've mentioned before that few things are more likely to irk our staffers that a eHow.com freelancer who fakes his references. In the first place, doing that makes it impossible to error-check the content and in the second place, it's intellectually dishonest. That, plus some sloppy work overall, is the basis for today's award. With that in mind, let's meet Brandon Salo and his SFGate.com post, "How to Build a Teak Shower Bench."

We noted with some dismay that Brandon's references were to 1) a website advertising a company that makes furniture, apparently chosen because it includes a photo of a cedar shower bench and 2) plans for a bench that bear absolutely no resemblance to what Brandon barfed up. With that in mind, let's have a look at his oeuvre...

Salo started by telling his readers to build a frame from four "1-by-3 teak boards," apparently under the mistaken impression that you can build an 11-inch-wide frame from a 9-inch board sandwiched between two 1-by-3s. Brandon? You can't: that's a 10½-inch frame, since 1-by-3s are ¾' thick.
Brandon wanted folks to slap 2-by-2 teak legs (where the heck can you buy teak 2-by-2s?) fifteen inches long in the corners and then lay 8 1-by-2s butted against each other on top of the frame. Once again, the size of dimensional lumber bit Salo in the hiney, since eight 1-by-2s would only cover twelve inches (a 1-by-2 is 1½" wide).

Even if the boy had gotten the dimensions right, the plans have... problems:

• At about 15¾" high, the bench will be uncomfortably low (a standard chair seat is 18" high).
• Those 2-by-2 legs will look rather spindly.
• Even if Salo had gotten the dimensions of the top right, the slats should be spaced to allow water to drain through.
• This putz wanted his readers to screw the slats from the top, which would look like crap.
• The construction has no internal bracing and no cross-bracing to ensure stability. In other words, it would last about fifteen minutes before collapsing.

No, it's pretty clear that Brandon just threw some MSU¹ "plans" at his keyboard. It appears that he neither looked at the pretty picture he cited nor paid a bit of attention to the actual plans (for a completely different bench) he claimed as his reference.

Yup: this quality is definitely worthy of its Dumbass of the Day award.

¹ MSU: Making Shit Up

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