Pallet outdoor bench

I have a lovely lanai, but until recently it was devoid of anything except scrap wood, pallets and bikes. It seemed like such a waste of an outdoor spot.

I was inspired by some of the pallet benches that I had seen while browsing, and decided to attempt one from Cherry Blossom Kind of Life. I say "attempt" because it didn't quite fit together the way I had hoped. Here's the after:

The lesson that I learned the hard way from this project was that one should put together the supports first. I assembled the frames for the seat and back, then tried to attach the arms. Since I was doing this by myself and the stinking thing is almost as long as I am, it didn't work very well. If you look closely, you can see where I cheated on the front right leg (left side of the picture) and added a little block of wood to help support the seat frame.

My pallets were rather uncooperative when it came to disassembling them, and a lot of the boards had bits that were cracked and had to be sacrificed with the saw. I wanted the back to be high so that tall people could lean back comfortably. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough boards that were long enough, so I decided to alternate them with short ones. The result is functional, and pretty comfortable, but it's not a very elegant solution. Rustic or craptastic? You decide.