Community Brag Posts

A good friend of mine, a pastor of a local church, asked me to build a pulpit for their recently finished church up in the countryside of Grenada. She showed me a picture of what she had in mind and based on that, I drew my own plan in SketchUp, and then built it out of Yellow Pine boards and Plywood.

Note to the dimensions:
After I drew the plan, and just when I was at the lumberyard to have the plywood and boards cut, I thought I might have had it estimated not wide enough, so I decided on the spot to make it 2" wider and the top panel 2" wider and deeper too. So if you'd like to build based on my plans, please consider if it's wide enough for your purposes.

This is what I used (corrected measurements here):

2x 2x8 26" long YP Boards (Base)
1x 18 1/2" x 6 1/2" Plywood (Base Support Panel)
1x 26" x 16" Plywood (Top)
1x 18 1/2" x 9" Plywood (Shelf Panel)
2x 45" x 9 1/2" Plywood (Side Panels ) - these are cut angled, see plans
1x 44 1/2" Wood Moulding (for the "stopper" on the top panel, and the "back" of the top shelf.

Used the plans for the twin bed, just added the difference in mattress size to the measurements. Pretty simple really. Used a cam lock centered above the door and a sawtooth picture hanger on the inside as a locking mechanism.

This is a Murphy Bed that I made for my daughter Alicia for their getaway home at Canadian Lakes, MI. Due to limited space i had to make it horizontal instead of the normal way of being vertical. It really comes in handy and takes up very little space.

Our local Habitat for Humanity puts on an annual event where they get folks to restore discarded or worn down furniture and sell them at auction. My wife and I participated last year and this year I was asked to build 4 dog houses and then they were going to let local designers/decorators finish them out.

I figured it would be easy to find a good dog house plan, but I was wrong so I had to come up with my own designs. I did not want to use plywood becauase I wanted them to look good. So I used 1x4's and 1x6's. I built them all just a little bit different, but the same basic design on all 3. Since I am not very good with circular cuts, did not do any fancy 1/2 circle doorways!

There are "after" pictures on the Blog. Thanks for looking!

I based my bed off of the Fillman Platform Bed plans. Just bumped the dimensions up to fit my mattress and added the mid supports. The frame was built using 2x6 boards taken from a fallen barn. I ripped 2 2x6 boards down the center to make the the supports for the slats. My feet are 3 2x6's screwed together and then attached to the frame. Next time I will cut a notch out of the feet so that I can rest the bed on them and then try to find some old lag bolts to attach them to the bed. The frame was put together using a Kreg Jig. I put the Cedar boards on to dress the front and sides up some and to help keep the slats from showing when the sheets were tucked in. My finish is 1 coat of Linseed Oil and 2 coats of Teak Oil.

Let me know if you have any further questions on this build. As soon as I find some doors I will be building a head board for this bed.

Our guest room finally has a headboard! I put together this queen size headboard using what I had learned building my daughter's headboard (and consulting the plans for the Reclaimed Wood Headboard) using the remainder of the plywood sheet from her headboard project, 2x3s for the legs, a 2x4 to join the legs (and connect to the metal bed frame), furring strips, and a 1x3 to top it off.

Our plywood had been cut to fit our car, so the first vertical furring strip was placed to hide the seam where I joined the two pieces back together. Then we evenly placed them from center as just looked right to us.

We had a great time seeing this come together as we didn't follow a specific plan, but were able to be a bit more creative inspired by various plans.

I built this outdoor sofa out of Blackwood. I tweaked Ana's plan to include a backrest and a support in the front, as my planks are only 23mm thick.

Tilt Out Wooden Trash Bin

After 7 years of our trash can sitting out in the open, my wife decided we needed to do something about it. I saw the plans for this tilt out wooden trash bin, and slightly modified it using tongue and groove for the face panel.

We followed the tea cart plan (mostly). Since the scalloped edge looked hard to us, we bought molding for trim instead. We had a mitre saw so used that to cut the molding at 45 degree angles. The kids have been putting all sorts of toys on it and right now it's their legos.

I made this box for my wifes christmas present. She has been riding horses for sometime and is planning on doing some shows. I built this box from Mimi's storage bench design, made it bigger, added a deeper box top and created the rest from looking at pictures online. Its all made of pine plywood and pine boards to keep it light. I added 4 castors to the bottom to make it easily moveable and hid them with the moulding around the bottom. Still has to be sanded and stained before it hits the barn. Its 39W X 24D X 29H. I used a piano hinge and routered the back to set the hing in. Added cove moulding around the bottom and to all the boxes around the front and side. Used a lot of pocket holes and finsh nails. Took me longer than it could have, because I planned everything as I went.  I will add more pictures when its finsihed. I would rate it intermediate to advanced depending on your skills with certain tools. 

The bench measures 54" wide x 21" deep.  We slightly modified the Rogue Engineer plans at the customers request to allow it to sit flush against the wall. 

Easy to build I used 2-12 for the top 

Just finished up my Murphy Bed project. Hope you like.