Community Brag Posts

We wanted to have a mantel for hanging the Christmas stockings this year and this fit perfectly! We modified the plans a bit by substituting 1x6's for the sides and a 1x12 on the top in order to gain a little more shelf space and to accommodate the LED fire logs. We added a piece of plywood painted black to mask the color of the wall and to give the "flames" a surface to reflect off of. We are debating giving a more realistic appearance by covering with mortar and brick tiles rubbed with charcoal. Thanks for the plan and for making these holidays special as the kids now believe Santa has a chimney to come down!

Built from Ana plans in a weekend. Finished last week. Chickens arrive this week.

Easy entertainment center that I made for my son

I was looking for plans to build a table like this and found Ana's site.

I had been eyeing this for awhile but, doors scare me. This is my daughters Christmas gift. It was a fairly easy quick build.
I am pleased with it.

This is a first time project that my husband and 11 yr old on made. 

This is a modification of the Farmhouse bed with a panel headboard and footboard rather than individual boards. It currently fits around the mattress/boxspring/metal frame. When we buy a new mattress, we will then add the joists, etc.

The headboard and footboard are both 72" wide. We had the guys at blue do a rip cut at 72" which ensures that both pieces are exactly the same measurement (for square.) Then, they turned the plywood a quarter turn and cut at 15" for the footboard. This left a 33" high headboard. It is 3 inches larger than the original plan, but it doesn't require a second cut and you don't see it anyway. The trim is just a 1x3 with a 1" overhang. (I might make it just a 3/4" if doing it again.)

The side boards are 1x12 cut at 80 1/4", but you may want to add a little if your comforter is really thick or if your mattress is much longer than ours at 79 1/2". We used non-mortised (no cutting into the wood) bed rail hardware from Woodcraft, so we could easily take it apart. These were placed 1 1/8" in from the inside edge of the 4x4 post. They were placed on the very edge of the side rail so it would butt up against the post. The 1 1/8" gives us plenty of room to shove the bedding down inside the side rail.

We glued and nailed 1x2s from the back for the trim on each piece.

Thanks for the free plans! Our children loved their new beds for Christmas! The beds were pretty easy to make and we decided to paint the beds fun colors for the kids.

I made these three farmhouse doll beds for my daughters. Initially, I made two beds following the plan as written but started feeling like they would take up too much space. My girls are close in age (4 and 2 yo twins) so waiting for one to outgrow something and passing it on isn't an option.

I gave the first two regular sized beds away as gifts and made three narrow versions that I saw on another blog http://thatsmyletter.blogspot.com/2011/02/b-is-for-bed-5.html Her bedding is still the gold standard in my eyes. LOVE IT!

On two of my beds, I left off one 1x2 slat, and on the other I used 3-1x3's. The width of the 3 beds are slightly different. Heck, I think I am incapable of making two things exactly the same. lol The girls love them so that's all that matters. For the bed that used 3-1x3s, I didn't write down the width of the top boards. I measured and cut as I assembled.

I put an extra 1x2 mattress support in the middle because I knew they would sit on them and used masonite to hold the mattress. Seems strong enough so far.

Before painting, I used lots of wood filler and caulk to hide some flaws. By the way, I feel like painting the beds is the hardest part. So many little grooves, nooks, and crannies. I recently bought a Graco 3900 HVLP paint sprayer. Painted a half wall and 6 long pieces of trim in 30 minutes today---love it! If I make another bed (or anything for that matter), I'm totally going to spray it.

Oh and I have to confess that after the first two beds, I got too impatient to use just screws so I used the nailer, glue, and used a few screws at key points. It made things go so much quicker, and the beds still feel quite sturdy. If my kids manage to break them, I'll make them new ones. :-)

I used 1" foam and muslin for the mattress & cover and fabric that I obsessively buy and hoard for everything else. The middle quilt is an actual quilt. I cut the squares and all---first time for that too. The other two are made of pre-made patchwork fabric from Joann's.

Thank you to everyone for sharing your creations, and thank you, Ana, for the plans. I am so inspired!

Well after a successful first project building a Wine Console for my sis-in-law it was time to tackle a project for my own home. We have a huge back wall in our living room that used to be covered by a cheap set of "DVD/CD Organizer" shelves. I hated them from the day I bought them, but they were cheap and they did what we needed. So for my next project I wanted to replace them with something classier.

The basic concept is based off the same workbench console that I used to build the wine table but with some major modifications. First off, it's 9 and a half feet long to better fit the size of the wall. I also wanted to add some shelves for more display space. The wife likes non-symmetrical design styles so I offset the shelves with one hanging from the bottom of the tabletop and the other resting on the bottom shelf.

I just finished it and moved it in so we're still trying to figure out what to put on it. Personally I like a more minimalist approach while my wife loves picture frames so I made a deal. You can see a guest appearance of the first of two $10 gallery shelves that I plan on putting the rest of our pictures on. Stained the same color as the table it looks great on the wall right above it.

It's all made from good ol' Home Depot pine and finished with 3 coats of Varathane's Kona Stain-Poly applied with a brush.

My daughter wanted to remodel her room with a peacock farm theme. These plans worked perfectly. I decided to just enclose the bottom, add 3 drawers and a barn door to give it functionality and add to the "farm" theme. Enclosing the bottom mad for way more storage in her room. I'm going to add a cubby on the head board side. It's going to mimic a "lean to" shead to further add to the rustic farm look.

We built this dollhouse bookcase pretty much to plan. We did add "shingles" to the top.
View more on our blog: http://www.bearrabbitbear.com/2012/02/dollhouse-bookcase.html

This was mine and my husbands first build! Considering we had absolutely zero knowledge and experience with tools, I think they turned out ok. Definitely need to find better board next time, and we know a few things to better/differently for the next build! :)