Community Brag Posts

For our wedding we wanted to make seating for our guests. We ended up making 16 chairs total over several weekends. We also made the pergola.

We needed a bookcase to fill a void in our living room and this was it. I altered the dimensions to increase the height to 72.5". I also added crown molding to the top which turned out nice. I used the same Bombay mahogany stain suggested by a previous post.

Hey yall!  This is Sara from OnHouseandHome.com with plans for my favorite build ever: my son's baby crib for less than $200. This is a super simple design that is fairly easy to build.  It's built from pine and poplar, both available at Lowe's or Home Depot, and I only used basic tools like a table saw, drill, kreg jig, and router to buil this.  The crib has survived a move to a new house and is currently housing my 2nd son so I can promise it's just as strong as it is stylish!  

My first project! A friend of my husband's came to visit for a weekend and was nice enough to show me how to use my handy dandy new air nailer. We had the bench put together in 15 minutes! And so began a beautiful friendship with furniture building...

Our niece recently moved to Virginia to live with us. I may or may not have been pinning ideas to a Pinterest Board http://pinterest.com/stoneybrookesty/teen-bedroom/ non-stop day and night from the moment I found out because I was so excited to get to decorate a “fun” room. Her only requests were that it include animal print and bright colors. After looking through dozens of inspiration pictures and taking a trip down the paint aisle at Lowes, she decided on bright pink (Valspar “First Kiss”), green (Valspar “Parakeet Green”), lavender (Valspar “Berries Galore”) and teal for her color scheme.

The headboard we scored for a cool $15 at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore and it just needed a coat of paint and a 1.5 yards of Nu-Suede fabric. We didn’t realize until we had the headboard home that it was sized for a queen and not a full so we had to do a little improv on the legs and attached a 12 inch section of 1 x 12 pine. These were leftover from the frame were no added cost.

We chose to make the Captain's storage bed from the Ana White plans because I wanted to make sure Tiff had plenty of room to put away all her books and make it easier to keep her room clean. The chevron storage bins are from Lowes. Which happened to have cheapest bins in fabric we liked and that fit when we were looking. We also found lots of good options at Target.

This 8ft dining table and bench was created with inspiration from Ana White (with a few modifications). It was made with all scrap wood except the table top. Full details of the table build (and kitchen remodel) can be found at www.chasingadreamblog.wordpress.com.

We made the farmhouse bed with a few modifications. We distressed the wood and did a whitewash finish. Absolutely love how this turned out!

Our master bedroom unfortunately had no closet, so for almost 2 years we had been using 4 store bought (cheap) racks that would break under the weight of the clothes and keep having to be replaced. There was however, a big nook in one wall of the room that could definitely be some kind of closet. I sat down and drew up a plan of what I thought would fit, but then had no idea how to go about building it. The plan sat in a drawer for months until after asking a friend about a shelf her husband built she sent me a link to this site and told me that's where she got the plans. I found the closet system plans and they were so close to what I had drawn up I was blown away! IT was no problem modifying the measurements to fit our space. I am SO happy with the results, all I need to do now is wait for some dry weather so we can paint!

This is from the simple white outdoor sofa plans, they were very easy to follow and came out great. I built it out of cedar for my mom's birthday that is her favorite wood. The cushions came from Wal-Mart on sale for 70.00 for the set. There is about 140 total in everything.

First time actually following a plan and not making it up as I go along! Turned out pretty nice :-)

This tv stand was my second project I made. It wasn't too difficult, but I'm definitely glad it's done and I can reclaim my kitchen counter!!
I designed this myself, gathering ideas here and there from different stands I saw. The tv stand I really wanted was this one from Wisteria.com. http://www.wisteria.com/Recycled-Pine-Console/productinfo/W4180/ I've been wanting it for years, and it was about $1200. So that's where I got the idea for the slatted shelves, and the industrial wheels.
The hardest part were the "x's" on the sides, and finishing it, getting in every nook and cranny. Not sure how I feel about the finish, so I'm going to live with it for awhile.
NOTE* Casters were bought BRAND NEW a week ago on amazon.com. I soaked them in muriatic acid for 24 hours, and then dipped them in baking soda and rinsed. Then I did minor touches with a propane torch. Didn't turn out how I expected, but I like how they turned out. PLEASE do your homework on muriatic acid before using it!!
The corner brackets on the top were found on wildwesthardware.com.
The lumber for this project was only about $80. But the corner brackets were $17 each (they are hand forged) and the wheels were $100 for the 4, (after shipping). Still better than $1200!!!
**On the 2nd and 3rd pic, the steel wool juice hasn't dried completely, that's why it looks splotchy.**

Hooray! I recently finished building a dining room bench. For this project, I used the Providence Bench plans by Ana White. I started this project in May, and two months later it is finally complete! I am really happy with how the bench turned out! It is pretty sturdy and makes for a nice addition to the dining room!

Thanks for the easy plans I was able to build this for my moms table.

My first project from Ana's website! I figured in order to make more furniture I'm going to need a sturdy work bench to help me along the way. I cut my legs at 36" instead of 33". The 3 added inches brings it to a standard kitchen countertop height (I think, at least mine is). Thanks for the inspiration and plan pericles49!

Farmhouse media console. Made out of pine, maple plywood and the top is made from reclaimed lumber. The center door is a roll-up barrister door.

i'm so grateful for all of ana's projects and plans!! we recently bought a new house and have decided to make much of the furniture so that every piece will be customized to fit the space... i'd rather spend hours in the garage making the perfect piece than spending days/weeks (and money!) to find something that "could work"...

i just finished my latest project from an ana white plan, easiest upholstered bench... and it WAS easy! the hardest part, for me at least, was the sewing.... but even that was straight lines, so not too difficult... and i'm so happy with the way it turned out...

a couple things i did differently from ana's plan were attaching the cover to the bench with nail heads... i like the idea of the slip cover for cleaning purposes... but it was getting "messy" every time we sat down and stood up... it just wasn't laying nicely... so i hemmed the bottom and attached the nail heads... i absolutely love how it turned out... this was my first time using those - and it was super easy... they came on a roll and every fifth "head" has a center hole for you to tap in a real nail head... the other four are just faux nail heads... the only issue i had with the nail heads was that the color was slightly off between the real ones and the fake ones... i read reviews about them and people mentioned a lot of the nails bending, but i didn't have that problem... so, overall, i was pleased with using the nail heads to attach the fabric to the bench...

the other change i made was to the foam... the foam at the fabric store was crazy expensive... and i had heard that getting the foam from home depot was much cheaper... but i couldn't find it at my home depot, so we bought a foam mattress cover for a twin bed... it was $24.99 - which is about 1/3 of the cost of 3" foam from the fabric store! the mattress foam was only 1.5" thick, but it was wide enough that we just cut two pieces and stacked them on top of each other...

other than that, we kept the dimensions of the bench the same as the original plans... it was already the perfect size for what we wanted... and we love it!

We modified the plan and made many changes along the way and here’s our finished island. We’re thrilled!