Community Brag Posts

When we moved into our new house, I figured it was time to replace my girls's mattresses on the floor with actual beds. so I set about making the twin storage beds with corner unit. I primed all the wood prior to cutting and assembling, and that made things go much faster. Assembling the corner unit was tricky, since i really didn't want to have sanding and much paint in their bedroom. (i loaded in the beds first and the corner unit a week later). I added trim that wasn't on the plan, and also used the magnetic paint on the center area, although it makes a weak magnetic surface. All in all, I LOVE the way it turns out and no one can believe that I built it and didn't buy it... (although it seems obvious to me when you look closely LOL)

Expecting our second child, my wife and I decided to do away with our guest bedroom and combine it with our office. The only problem was our queen bed took up way too much space and it didn't get enough use to justify the sacrifice. We looked at the wall bed options available for purchase and decided they were way too blah and very expensive. I then found the "A MURPHY BED YOU CAN BUILD, AND AFFORD TO BUILD" post on Ana's website (thanks for the inspiration)! 

 Using cheap pine boards, plywood, door hinges, vinyl upholstery and stain I constructed the wall bed you see here. It really wasn't that difficult but facing it took the most time. To give the boards a more rustic look I used a utility knife to shave off the edges/corners and stained them with the Minwax American Walnut water based stain and the Minwax White Wash Pickling. When this started we thought we were going to have to settle for something unattractive and less than desirable. Seeing it in our office now, we love our new bed and actually think it makes the room look much better!  I didn't keep track of costs, but it couldn't have been more than $150.

My wife saw something like this on Pinterest and desperately wanted one. The one she saw was hexagonal in shape. We didn't need as many swings so we went with just a plain square shape. We used 6x6s for the legs and posts across the top and used 4x4s for the angled support pieces. We built the swings using the plan from this website. All the materials can be picked up at the blue and orange stores. However when it came to the springs for the swings, the blue store was 1/3 of the price of HD. The legs are 12' long and buried 4' under the ground and cemented in for strength. Luckily I am retired military and was able to rent an auger for 1/2 the price of HD or the blue store. You could do it by hand but it saved us hours and lots of back pain. We found our dimensions for the size we wanted and spray painted dots on the ground where the posts were going to go. We dug the holes and stuffed the 6x6s in them. Using a post level we made sure they were plum. We braced them and added the quickrete and left them to setup over night. The next day we had to make sure all the tops were level with each other. This is where having some knowledge of physics paid off. I took clear tubing and screwed it above the height that I wanted on one post and then screwed the other end to another post. Fill it with water until the water level on the first post is where I wanted it (8 feet high) and it will automatically fill it level on the other end. There is a picture of this above. Water will always level itself out. I had to do this because my yard is at a slight down hill grade. We marked it and cut the tops off to make it level. After attaching the 6x6s on the top with 8" lag bolts it was time to paint. After painting was done we built 3 swings from Ana's plans. We shortened them by 6" to give room to walk between the legs and the swings. All in all it was a great project that only took two dedicated weekends. My wife still has to paint the swings though.

Farmhouse dining room table built for my mom. Unstained.

Table top is 2" White Pine Boards, legs are cedar, and everything else is whitewood studs. Left the leg assemblies and stretcher board unattached for the two hour transport to Charlotte.  Attached them with screws and some glue upon arrival. Loved the plan and finished in two days!

Well, this crib is STILL unfinished, and the date-stamp says I built it December 5th.... So... Uhh.. I should really get on that!

I had initially built this crib for a friend's daughter's birthday gift, but the baby (8 months old at the time) got REALLY sick, so I wasn't able to finish it in time (don't worry, we got her a Pillow Pet - she got a gift still!). It was just before Christmas, so instead of going out and spending more money that we were tight on, I just bought 3 1x2s and used scraps for the rest of it.

The crib's basically been sitting in the baby's room looking cute until about a month ago. That's when she decided that her stuffed owl (from Build-A-Bear) needed to be put to bed every night before I put HER to bed. It's become such a routine that I have no idea how she'd react if we couldn't put her owl to bed! So I'm scared to try to start filling all the holes and painting in fear that we'd have a mental breakdown if I didn't finish in time for bed! EEK!

Made this one with shelf edges/trim just on the sides. Somehow my top shelf didn't span the width so had to add a little shim on each side but it all worked out! We had all the pallets and used 1x3s for the frame because some of my pallet wood was heavy hardwood. It was not without frustration because I was working with uneven/warped pallet wood but it hits the rustic look.  I am happy with how it turned out. 

We had these spices in a cabinet, which were impossible to see stuff in the back. This was a perfect solution.

Now, we also had more spices then we know what to do with, so we added a second rack at the bottom of the door as well. I just adapted the plans to be 30 inches tall to accommodate the size of the lower portion of the door. This was accomplished by removing the 1st and 3rd measurements for shelves, and using the remaining for an extra tall shelf.

I also only used a finish nailer (and wood glue),to assemble, in combination with a brad nailer to hold the back plywood on.

I also chose not to include the dowel buttons on the end, and did not cut the dowels to length; they were inserted all the way through and trimmed off with a Japanese pull saw (get one, you will LOVE it), then fastened through the front with the finish nailer, then sanded flush.

I also elected not to paint to finish the piece and leave the natural wood.

Made a 4 foot version of the farmhouse bench. I also used 4x4s for the legs instead of 2x4s. They work great, just makes the bench a little heavy.