Community Brag Posts

My son was about to turn 3 and I really wanted to redesign his bedroom as a birthday surprise. We went with a Toy Story themed room, he just loves Toy Story. I started off by painting the walls blue with yellow stars like Andy's room in the movie. I added some custom painted art work and then it was off to find a cool playhouse bed. My husband and I were shopping around and we could never really find what we were looking for in the store. So we decided to build one ourselves using plans from this website. I used the playhouse loft bed and the playhouse loft bed stair plans, for the bed and the stairs. I used the castle loft bed plan as inspiration for the slide. The project took us about 5 weeks from start to finish. We both have full time jobs and we did most of the work on the weekends. I looked at each plan very carefully and made notes. I had to modify the stair plans slightly to fit the space where we wanted to put the bed. The stairs look narrow, but they work just fine. My husband and I can both use them to get up in the bed. The stairs feature hinged stair tread with built in storage. We built them like that at first, but then later decided to make them stationary stair treads, with plywood. I didn't like the way the hinges looked and the top stair was so deep that I was worried my son would fall in there and get stuck. The storage idea was neat, but his safety was more important to me. The bed turned out really nice and VERY sturdy. Both my husband and I are able to get up there with my son (not at the same time). Another modification that I made was instead of slats to hold on the mattress, I used a piece of plywood. I wanted the roof in the playhouse to look finished, and I didn't want to see his bedding hanging down from the slats. I painted the top of the plywood white, where the mattress goes to blend in with the slats, and the other side was painted blue to match the walls inside the playhouse. I did modify the playhouse front facade to have 2 windows and one door. I like the symmetrical look. The total project cost about $400. I used birch plywood and select pine boards, and about 6 quarts of paint. I noticed AFTER we had finished the bed using the birch plywood, that Home Depot had cabinet grade plywood on a random end cap, that was just as nice for $12 less a sheet. If I could do it all over again, I would definitely use that!. I wanted the paint to have a nice smooth finish, without having to do a lot of sanding or patching. We had Home Depot cut the plywood to the dimensions we needed. I had my husband cut the rest of the wood dimensions listed in the plans, and then I painted all of them before we put the pieces together. I used a small roller and self priming paint. The paint finish looks great. After assembling the bed I can not imagine what I would have gone through trying to paint it after the fact. The slide was a bit tricky, I looked at the plan for the castle loft bed and attempted to use those dimensions, and for the most part they worked. But when we went to assemble the slide, we did end up recutting some of the wood to different dimensions. I used a piece of the melamine coated closet shelf material for the slide. It is already finished in white and its nice and slick, like a slide should be! I hate MDF, but for this it seemed the best fit. We cut the top edge at an angle to meet up with the slide platform. PLEASE BE CAREFUL with this material. After it was angle cut the edge was razor sharp and I sliced my fingers up. Once it was installed it butted up perfectly to the slide platform, and the edge was hidden and not a danger. But use caution during the install. Clamps are your friend! We used Kreg clamps for everything. They kept the wood in place while we were screwing the parts together. The coolest thing that my husband came up with was clamping two identical pieces for plywood together, and drawing the template for the slide support walls. Then he used his circular saw to cut them out. We ended up with two mirror image pieces. They looked awesome. I left them clamped together when I sanded the edges as well. We really didn't have any building experience other, than building tables and chairs for children, We got the deluxe Kreg jig kit and a miter saw on Craigslist for $50 each and they were both practically brand new. This was the first time we had ever used a Kreg jig and we are both addicted. That thing is the bomb. We locked my son out of his room for a week while we assembled everything. We had the big reveal at his birthday party and all of the guests were excited to see it after seeing my facebook teaser posts of our progress. There were 8 kids up there at one time and the bed did not budge. They all enjoyed the slide. I did the planning and paint and my husband did an awesome job making all of the cuts and sanding everything. We are both very proud of the final product. My son love his new big boy bed. DISCLAIMER: This bed is not recommended for a child under 6 years old. My son is mature for his age and we monitor him carefully.

I felt a floating cabinet would make the room more spacious and wanted to showcase my brick wall so I designed and built this media cabinet.

I love Ana's original design and it was a great inspiration. I needed to add more baskets so I adjusted it a little. I had some drawer slides sitting around so I added a pull out shelf to fold on as well.

We really wanted to give our 2 year old a play kitchen for Christmas. We also didn't want to spend the money on the likes of the Pottery Barn set, and weweren't sold on the lesser-expensive options. Fortunately, a quick internet search led me to Ana White's website and plans for this play kitchen. As someone who has never built anything before, the plans seemed very doable. All of the brag posts were also inspirational and sold me on starting this project. I worked on this an hour or so after work for a couple of weeks, and then a few longer nights running up to Christmas Eve (always a bit of a procrastinator!). As neither my wife or I know how to sew, we decided to turn the space underneath the sink into a cabinet. The paint color was left over from painting our kitchen and family room, and we decided to stain the stove and counter tops. Overall, we are very pleased and proud with how this turned out, and our 2 year old loves playing with the set!

I built this new workbench for my garage to accomodate my table and miter saw and to add some stowaway storage and I cant tell you how much I love it, especially with being able to pull the tables out to make an outfeed for the tablesaw. I altered theplans a bit to shorten the entire length by nearly 1.5 feet and instead of the board mounted tool space I added my bench vise to this gap and use shelved underneath for storage. The plan was simple to follow and allowed me to build a bench that all of my neighbors talk about now! Thanks so much Ana!

Ripped a 2x4 down the middle for the legs and bottom rungs, so custom 2x2s.  1x2s for the mid and top.  Biscuit jointed and edge glued 12x12 Hard Maple Top.  Glue and pocket hole joinery. 

Your plans made this project so much easier. We love it and have gotten a lot of compliments for it.

I started with the original plans for the sandbox with the benches, and then just sort of took off with the modifications.

When it's open, it's a 4'x6' sandbox with a bench on one side and a canopy overhead. When it's closed, it's a stage complete with curtains, or can also convert into a puppet theatre.

I had to make several adjustments to the original plan to allow for enough support for the stage to be walked (and danced) on, including an extra armrest in the bench, and a few blocks built up from the base of the sand area. I also used 1x6 boards for the top instead of 1x4, to cover the entire 4' with only the one bench.

Thanks so much for the plans, my girls love it! (and thanks to KnittingEmily for posting the plans for the 6' sandbox, which gave me a jumping off point for the sizing I used.)

The story of how I built it can be found here:
http://www.thislemonyogurt.com/a-box-of-sand/

About a year ago, I stumbled across your site, I was a lurker for awhile, finally joined, and can finally post the projects I have done so far. This was my second build from your site. It works perfectly on the front porch.

This is inspired by mud room bench with drawer. Apparently I had to make quite some modifications as this is for a bay window bench with trapezoid shape instead of a rectangular. In the middle are 2 drawers, at both ends are corner cabinets. Ana's design worked beautifully as the foundation of my project.