Community Brag Posts

Good plans and easy to follow directions.

I LOVE my new patio table and benches. They came out great, and I hope they hold up for several years with the waterproofing stain I used.

I built this Farmhouse Queen Bed & Kentwood Night Stand for my Granddaughter. She loves it !

Hi friends!
 

Jen Woodhouse here, sharing this adorable summer project with you! I'm in the mood for all things outdoor, so I thought I'd share this build I created last year. This Kids Outdoor Double Lounge Chair made my kiddos so happy. They spend a ton of time at the pool and this Lounge Chair offers them a little bit of shade, and cup holders too for their drinks! 

Be sure to tag me @jenwoodhouse if you share photos of your build on social media.

You can get all the details and the plans for this build on JenWoodhouse.com!

Schedule

This is the first project that i completed. I made a few minor changes. I used a Kreg jig to fix the shelves into the book cases. I also wanted the top of the desk to be thicker so i glued and screwed two pieces of 3/4 hardwood ply together and finished the edges. I then added heavy drawer slides to handle the drawers as i had made them larger.

I adjusted the height of the armoire to 72 inches. It was a little tricky getting the doors to hang straight. I blame the new driveway; we just moved into a new house with a sloped driveway (our old one was super flat). I got the hardware at Lowe's. I also added a block of wood at the top, on the inside, to mount the door catches. I mounted them on the top and bottom on both doors, so four catches total. That really helped with the way the doors looked when closed.

I have only one small bathroom in my house built in 1946. I couldn't find a vanity on the market that was big enough or small enough to fit, so I built my own based on a design from the Decor and the Dog blog page.

This is my take on the Narrow Farm House Table.  Only Fifty-two inches by thirty-two Finished with a flat red base and Jacobean stained top with an over coat of oil based polyurethane.  If I were to do this project again I would consider cutting in an arc on the long side stretcher.  I did taper the legs in both directions so it dosen’t appear to be too chunky.  Corner braces were installed and I didn’t add a stretcher since the overall length was shortened.  

I fell in love with the Farmhouse bed after seeing Ana's bed on this site and just knew I had to make it. I'll preface this by noting that neither my husband or myself are builders or even owned any tools with the exception of an 18 volt drill. After building this bed, we went out and bought everything we need to build more pieces from Ana's collection of plans :) This project was very fun, forgiving, and the finished bed is absolutely beautiful.

I do have a few notes that would hopefully help people build this in the future. Hopefully you are reading this.

1) As Ana suggested, read ALL of the Farmhouse plans thoroughly, including the comments! Each of the plans are slightly different and might have a modification that would better suit you (I wish I had built the frame using the Fancy Farmhouse Bed. The way you assemble it makes it 7 inches narrower which would have been nice in our small room). There are also very valuable tips in the reader comments, so read those!

2) Read as many brag posts as you can. I saw that one lady used joist hangers for her support beams and side rail brackets so that the bed could be disassembled some day. That's what I did and I'm so, so glad that I did. You can find her post by googling "joist hanger + Ana White."

3) 4.5" screws are hard to find. I wont say impossible since some people did find them. If you use the new method for the posts of using 2x4s, you wont need the 4.5" screws. If you are using 4x4s, like I did, use lag bolts. I think the lag bolts will be more sturdy in the end anyway.

4) I should have made this item #1. In regards to the King size headboard plans, Ana has her mattress turned sideways and posted plans for a bed 80" wide. Since I did not thoroughly read Ana's notes, I missed that bit of important information and made my headboard 80" wide. Oops. Well, like I said earlier, this is a VERY forgiving plan. We just put the side rails on the inside of the 4x4 posts and added a .5 plywood scab to the inside of the side rails before we installed the joist hangers and that solved the problem. 80"-1.5"-1.5"-.5"-.5"= 76"! Since our bed is a platform bed, it worked out perfectly... just a little wider than it needed to be, but no one can tell the difference.

5) You actually need (5) 1x8 boards. I believe someone also posted that in the comments under the king farmhouse headboard plans. You also need (24) 4.5" screws or lag bolts, the plans only call for 20. (Ana calls for 6 per leg @ 4 legs = 24.

6) Really be sure of how high you want your bed before putting it together. Ours came out a little high, and if we wanted to, we could have cut the posts on the headboard a little shorter and mounted the side rails lower, but we just wanted to get the bed done. There is a lot of room to customize things in this plan so be sure to think everything out.

I think that’s it for now. If you have any questions, please let me know. I’d be happy to offer up any information I have learned while making this bed.

I modified the size for my table a bit to make it smaller

Easy-peasy! Painted in a constrating color for a great look on the wall...

My husband and I built this table from the farmhouse table plans (Kreg-jig). I wanted a farmhouse table for our new patio and couldn’t quit find one to buy-so we made it! We used red cedar because it is an outdoor table and we wanted it weather resistant. 

I had tons of help from this website and from the employees at Lowe's in deciding what to purchase and what steps to take. I ended up spending around $130 on all the items needed - but if I ever need to make more it will be just the cost of the lumber!

I am the poster girl for making mistakes while learning, no joke. Generally, I make the uh-oh on a step that I’ve done a zillion times, because I am so busy making sure that the parts that are brand new to me go well. Years ago I was trying to impress a roommate and I worked super hard on a lemon spaghetti dish. I learned to zest and juice a lemon but completely forgot about draining my noodles. Hello disgusting! Putting together my Ana-White project was no different. I gently sanded the wood with my sanding sponge and wiped them off with a rag. I then placed two of the 1x4’s together and made sure that they were even. I discovered that it would be next to impossible to have perfect shelves, so I was going to let it go and just have fun. I pre-drilled a hole, then used a countersink bit to match the head of my wood screw, and held the boards together with all my might while I drilled in the first screw. Of course, since that worked out so well… I decided to try something different! Cap had told me that these particular screws practically countersunk themselves. Sweet! Therefore, on the second screw I predrilled and then tried to see what would happen if I skipped the countersink bit step and just put the screw in. Fail! The wood made this groan sound and the screw didn’t go into a nice neat hole, but instead just kind of escaped in like a finger in pudding. No good! I realized that I had forgotten to use wood glue, so I took both screws back out, put the wood glue in, and back in the screws. I returned to the first method of predrill, countersink bit, wood glue, then screw and finished it off. I held the 1x2 into place and used finishing nails to attach it to the 1x4s. Using a nail punch, I made sure there was a little hole atop each nail. I filled all the holes and a few of my mistakes with wood filler. While the filler was drying I repeated all the steps, sans many of the mistakes adding in a few others, and was done with the first step of building shelves! Next I used a two inch angle brush and applied the primer. After it was dried I applied the paint using a two inch roller. When it was all dried I marked my studs and my board, predrilled, and screwed them into the wall! That was it! It was so much fun and completely empowering. I can't wait to do the next one.

I built these 2 shelves for my 2 older children to use when hanging up thier backpacks and for a place to put library books so they don't get lost in the pile of other books laying around the house. I didn't have a convinient stud to attach them to, so my husband used 4 drywall anchors. They seem pretty sturdy. It only took me about an hour to cut and assemble both shelves and cost around $20 to make 2. I did find that the screws that came with the hooks were too long and poked through the back of the front board, but I just used a file to smooth out the tip of the screw so it didn't catch anything. Building this really made me wish I had the Ryobi cordless nail gun. I may or may not have hammered my thumb pretty good during assembly.

So thankful for the plans to build the closet shelves. They were key to our building out our new walk-in closet.  Love it and this site!  Onward to the next project!