My daughter asked me to make a bench for her daughter’s school bus stop. After looking at many different plans I chose your plans for a 2x4 bench with modifications. I made it 7’ wide with an additional support piece in the center. I used pressure treated wood for the base and cedar for the seat and back. I finished it with a gloss “school bus yellow” and gloss black. It was very well received by the children and parents.

Ken Shallcross

we have finished my sons room, it has taken us nearly a year but this bed looks fantastic and is much sturdier than the ones you can buy!!!

Slightly changed the plans by adding the exotic wood 'Purpleheart' to the top and drawer fronts.

The tapered legs added some elegance but were very difficult to make, as it was my first time trying it.

I used furniture grade Select Black Label Pine which was costly, but I wanted a good contrast between the white pine and purpleheart.

No stain, just clear lacquer to maximize the color.

The pieces of Purpleheart cost was about $60.00, added to the select pine cost.

This is a great plan that you can modify slightly if you want. We now plan on making a much simpler and smaller one for our bathroom.

This one will probably end up in our living room instead of the bedroom!

Thank You Ana for a great plan!

I had so much fun building this! I got a little creative with the corner section and decided to make it a table. I built a small hatch so that I could put in a container for ice and cold beer. When the hatch is not in use, the container can be removed and the hatch can be closed to provide more table space. I also added drink holders! 

I'm fostering two mastiff puppies and they quickly outgrew the old plastic kennel they were sharing. So, I built them a new and improved kennel! It's so much nicer than that old one and looks great in my living room. The puppies appreciate the additional room, too! Now hopefully a family comes along soon to adopt them before they outgrow this kennel, too! :)

Building this kennel was the first time I used a Kreg Jig. I LOVE it! I will be using it a lot more on future projects.

I put a stop plate on the inside of the door frame so that the door stops right where it should to latch it and not swing inwards.

I installed the shelves and the center dividers with dados. I suggest planning ahead for your hinges, I had a rough time finding the perfect hinges for some reason.

A big, big, BIG suggestion though, is to stain BEFORE assembly!! I nearly destroyed the piece with the difficult staining in the inside corners. It is very difficult to keep stain even in them. I used General Finishes "Black Cherry" water based stain, the first time using a water based stain. I found it very unforgiving and it left bad blotches, brush and rag marks. I topped it with General Finishes Arm R Seal.

In the end, this came together well enough that I felt a little guilty for not using better lumber than pine. It's nice enough, I think, to warrant spending a little more on quality hardwood.

Simple Modern Toy Box with Lid

-made with pine.

- paint was matched at Sherwin Williams to other furniture.

Cute farmhouse x style night stand with hidden storage.

I made this TV Stand for the family that bought the coffee table that I made before. I loosely based the design from a medley of things on the site, but ended up drawing up plans myself in Sketchup.

This took a while because I had to think through alot of the design things - like how to best do the glass panel doors and how to compensate in the plans for some bowing in the plywood.

It is basically a plywood box, trimmed out like most of the things we DIYers do.

My biggest challenge in this project was cost... I severely underestimated how much it would cost me to build it, so I ended up with only $50 profit on the job... Does anyone have suggestion.. if you are building things to sell them how do you price your products? Just curious.

With Spring near I decided it's time to finally make some vegetable boxes. These plans were super easy, and easy to add a few little features.

I live in Oregon and even though cedar is tough, with all the rain we get, the color fades fast!! I was also worried about the inside rotting away from the solid like you see at the bottom of a fence!

I was surprised there weren't a million different stains that were "Organic" with that be so popular. I new my kiddos would eat most of the stuff before it made it into our house, so I decided to leave the inside natural and line it with heavy duty visqueen.

I stained the outside to protect the wood, using some Australian Timber oil I had left over from another project!!

My Kid loved his new bed, I made an extra storage for his toys in the space under the bed so he can play.

"Cellar? What cellar? We don't have a cellar... Oh, you mean the new sand box! Here, let me get some shade too."

I'm not sure why, but I can never seem to follow plans exactly. I guess that's not entirely true. I CAN follow plans exactly, but I almost never do. Maybe it's some sort of passive rebellion or something, but I usually have to put my own spin on the things that I build. Sometimes it works out in my favor. Sometimes not. This build was a little of both.

I decided to only build one bench in our sand box. This cut down on a lot of supplies. By making it longer a single bench and making it longer, it covers about the same amount of square feet, just in a rectangle instead of a square. When pricing lumber, I noticed that 2x8's were cheaper than 1x8's. So I went with those instead. It can't hurt to beef up the sides a little, right? This required some easy calculations on the cut list. I also decided to use 1x6 fence planks instead of 1x4 whitewood or pine. The fence planks were cheap, and I figured they would look nice in the back yard. They are also naturally pest and rot resistant. They required extra sanding to take the rough off. However, this is one place that I'm thinking the modification didn't work in my favor. The fence planks are not as thick as the whitewood. This combined with the increased length makes the the top pieces feel pretty weak. I put a little support piece under the bench. I'm quite sure the bench would not have held up well without the support.

Because this is an outdoor piece, I dry fit everything, and then stained everything before assembling it, to make sure all of the edges were well protected.

Cost breakdown (not including canopy)
Fence planks $14
2x8x8 $11
hinges $9
handle $2
stain $10

My hubby built this from saushas washer/dryer pedestal plans. He modified it a bit because we needed the storage taller underneath for shoes and baskets. Our closet is right by the front door and it was always a mass of shoes in front of the washer and dryer that you couldn't shut the door! It works great. We have beautiful hardwood floors (that was my hubby's trade for 12 years) and didn't want to cover them up either:)