I've been wanting to tile a small bench to put by my front door for a long time. Finally, I found a concrete form at the Mexican Garden at 2854 E. Grant Road -- they had larger ones but Art Loya offered to make one the size I wanted for $45! A bargain! The top is 12 x 24". If you're interested in doing a similar project, check out their benches. They're very reasonably priced and it's fun to brouse around the place. They also have small talavera and solid color tiles that are the right thickness to go with my handmade ones.I have a ton of tiles on this -- probably many more than anyone else would want to do. The tiles are colorful and I used black cherry grout. It fits nicely in my spot. And what's best is that it doesn't need any water like the plants that I repeatedly killed from neglect there. If you wonder, the lettering on the top has a saying that I've always liked: "All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today."
I think if I were doing another bench, I'd probably just put tiles on the top surface. I'd stain the legs to match the grout instead of putting tiles onto them -- it would make the project much less expensive but would still be just as lovely. And another thing -- I suggest getting some help with lifting -- even though it was in 3 parts, each part still weighed a ton! At least!
