Community Brag Posts

This was a very fun and one of the easiest projects I have made from Ana's plans! This makes me want to see if I can make matching chairs as well!

If you have seen my other projects, you know that I try to keep the lumber cost of my projects as close to free as possible. Living on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, pallets are not free, so I did have to pay $2 for each pallet, being VERY choosy about the slats being all the same size and straight. The hardest part of the project was taking the pallets apart! Check the blog link for more details.

I used 1 1/2 pallets for this project, and the following tools:

Jigsaw (to cut the ends off the pallet)

Pry-bar (to loosen the slats from the center of the pallet)

Miter saw

Drill

Table Saw (ripping the 2x4 sections of the pallet, to make the legs and spacers of the table)

Palm sander

Not too bad of a project but had to a good bit of guess work so I could changed the plans for a queen size bed and flip in on its side.

I love the Farmhouse Doll Bed, but because we bought a lot of doll clothes, I built a wardrobe to go with it.

The wardrobe is 21 1/2" tall X 14" wide X 7" deep. The inside shelf is 4" from the top. I'm having trouble uploading a photo of the inside, but will keep trying...

I made a mattress to look like the older striped "ticking" style. I still need to do a little more with the bedding because I'm not happy with the (muslin) pillowcase and want to do something brighter.

Cost was minimal because I'm still using up scraps from other wood projects and I used material for the mattress and bedding that I already had. That is what I love about some of the plans - they help me to use my leftover materials and still have something nice to give as gifts.

Thank you so much Anna for this plan - I also followed your suggestion and made a second one to donate. I love your site...

Hi all,
This is my second project I have build from plans I have found here. I'm a novice at woodworking and only get a couple hours on the weekend to work on projects. So it takes a while to finish one. My daughter loves her new toy shelf. The hardest part for me was to attach the doors straight. I'm sure there is a secret I just haven't figured it out yet.
I primed the whole piece, applied three thin coats of latex paint and sanded with 320 grit sandpaper in between coats. I applied two coats of finish after 48 hours and sanded with 400 grit sandpaper in between.

Outside sauna.

Two Piece Portable Outdoor Wood Chair

I followed Ana's plans as written. However, I couldn't find a locking hinge the comments suggested. I will keep on the look-out for this though. I used 3/4" hardwood and had Blue do all the cuts for me. Easy-peasy. I painted the whole thing with left-over paint and then randomly taped off stripes using more leftovers and then protected everything with a coat of poly. Finally, I used a double layer of quilt batting and 100% cotton fabric to upholster one of the leaves for use as an ironing board. Literally finished this today, so I haven't had a chance to use it, but I'm so excited with how it turned out!

My first build! Very simple and straightforward. I chose to not have the bench raised off the ground; however, the legs were cut at the same length as the plans, so my shoe storage is a little taller than the plans, giving me more room for boots.

If I was to do it again, I would not use 1x3's for the lower cross boards, instead I would use 1x4's to match the upper cross boards so there's some symmetry, since it just sits on the floor rather than being raised up.

The build itself took me about 3 hours, which seems like a lot for something this simple, but again, it was my first build, first time using the Kreg Jig (love it!!), and it took me a while to deal with my less-than-perfect boards.

The hardest (and longest) part of this project was the painting! I have alway just used wood stain when I have refinished furniture, but I decided to go with white Rustoleum primer followed with 2 coats of Rustoleum paint, and finished off with a coat of Rustoleum lacquer. The paint was very thick and even with a $20 paint brush it did not go on evenly--it was a huge source of irritation! I also decided to use decorative hinges on the exterior rather than slim hinges on the inside.

Love this shelf. We found we had to pre-drill holes since the wood we used was very dense, but in the end it was still a 1-day project (including buying wood and running other errands). It was perfect for our storage room since we really wanted a shelf to store totes, but didn't want to spend a lot on a room we never go in. In the end we spent $80 on wood, which is far less than comparable metal shelves for $160-$180 elsewhere. In addition this thing is STURDY. Thank you Ana!!

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.

My wife has been asking for new dressers for the boy's room for a while now but every time we go out shopping for them I am very disappointed in the quality of what is available. So I decided to make them myself. I have not made any furniture before and needed a few tools to help me out and thought what better way to get both the practice and the tools then build my own router table.

I searched the web for plans and found these great ones. I loved these plans but wanted to make a couple of changes anyway. I decide to build the table top as well as the cabinet and decided to make it a little taller to fit me better. Due to the changes and making the table top it took me 2 days to finish, 1 day for the cabinet and 1 for the top and to put it all together. (Not having used a router before it took me a while to get the template just right to cut in the insert.)

It works great and looks great in my shop. Now on to the dressers.

This was fun and easy. I had some of the wood already so I didn't spend that much. My girls painted it to add a personal touch. I would consider adding a magnet to help the doors stay closed a little better. Its been a couple of years and they are still enjoying this. At the time I had no idea how to make a star. Now I know it woudl be easy with a jig saw. 

This project was really pretty easy. The hardest part was holding the pieces just right so they ended up where we wanted once the kreg jig hole screws went in. Also, we had to be sure not to overtighten the screws and cause splitting.

We did have to make two adjustments to the plans. I think the first was a typo...where it says 2 - 1x2 @ 15 3/4" (door sides) they should actually be 1x3 based on the images.

The second adjustment was the plywood for the back 17 3/4" x 21" ended up too wide for the end to fit on, so we made it 17 3/4" x 20"