A friend of ours wanted a Leopold Bench, but does not currently have the space to put it outside. She’s @ UT so has a lot of books to deal with and requested that we make the bench into a temporary shelf. Here are the results:

You can see that I used a piece of 1×10, cut to about 42 inches, to act as an upper shelf. It is mounted to two scraps of 2x8s, cut at 22 degrees. This means that the shelf leans at the same angle as the Leopold. The 1×10 touches the back, so it has support along that entire edge.

Some books on the top:

This is a nice way to retrofit a Leopold Bench for indoor use. Once school is over, she can remove the shelf and use the bench as originally intended. Since the shelf is not fastened to the bench, this is easy to do — and the bench doesn’t get altered in any way (ex. no dados [slots]  in the sides).