Last year I bought a little farm in Michigan that I've been slowly moving into. Today, I was cleaning out a room in the basement that had an old work bench in it. The previous owner left me several of these benches spread around the property's buildings. They all bear the same design and were all clad in pressed board, which, like any reasonably minded man, I loathe. The frames are cobbled together with 2x stock on PT 4x6 legs. I've been stripping these down to the frame and refitting them with plywood tops. As a bonus he used spiral shank 8p nails to attach two layers of pressed board for a top. Each nailed successively.

These all have a single full width shelf underneath built on 2x4 rails. Oddly, he'd covered both the bottom and the top of the rails leaving a 3.5" deep compartment in the shelf. He did this on all of them. The bench in the basement is the forth one of these that I've salvaged. This bench was a repository for the 50 years of leftover paint cans that were generously left for me. After clearing out the old paint, I removed the pressed board shelf top expecting to find a rodent den or some other cross section of nature. The compartments of three other benches like this were empty, but not this one.

Originally Posted by 16penny
If you put Taco Bell sauce in your ramen noodles it tastes just like poverty