Community Brag Posts

I love the little tansu chest that I bought for my apartment while I was living in Japan, but at only 14" high it has been hard to incorporate into my home in the U.S. without it looking like a piece of doll furniture.

To solve my problem I decided to try to turn it into a console table. I wasn't able to find wood with the fine grain to match the chest for legs so I decided to match the black metal pulls instead.

While I was trying to figure out what to do I remembered seeing the DIY Industrial Cart here that used pipes between the shelves which inspired me to use pipes for the legs.

For details, check out my blog: http://www.homeandawaywithlisa.com/blog/2012/4/30/turning-a-chest-into-…

My wife and I wanted to turn our upstairs hallway/vacant little area into a book nook for our girls. My wife found some shelves that she wanted me to copy, so I did, but I added some custom routing to them. I had an area where I wanted to build an L shaped bench for the girls to hang out and read on. I had some old chair legs lying around, that I decided to recycle and use for the bench. I knew it would be a lot of work to sand them down and restain them, and my wife LOVES everything painted white (I don't get it) so I painted them white. At that point I had an idea to use some maple hardwood plywood for the bench seat, but I wanted it to be trimmed/outlined in white. I ran some pine furring through my joiner/planer and then I did some custom routing to it. I finish sanded the pine trim pieces and then painted them white as well. The maple plywood got a lite scuffing with 220 then stained and clear coated with some water based oil modified minwax semigloss poly. After I finished building the nook, there was some concern of the girls climbing up over the top of the bench and falling from the second story. I then custom routed some kiln dried pine, and planed some 2x2 furring, until it was square. The 2x2 was painted white and the kiln dried pine was stained and cleared, then I installed the safety rail. If anyone wants a build plan, I can write a step by step on how to build this or something similar to it.

I needed some storage area for the guest bath, and this was perfect! Always an easy build when using Ana's plans!

Our shoes have always been a very messy area that we couldn't keep clean with not much of an entry area. I saw your laundry basket tower and thought it might work for our shoes. We're very happy with how it's helping to keep us organized!

Crystal

So now that everyone at work found out that I could build furniture I started getting special request. I modified the top of the benchwright table that way my co-worker can use this table to hold their 30 gallon fish tank. This was a pretty easy build once I found a place without warped wood.

I took the Ana White plans for this bed and modified them just slightly. I decided to cover up the top opening on the front, and add some plywood "trees" so that the ned looks like it is being suspended by the trees. I used whitewood from Lowe's, a compound miter saw, the AWESOME Kreg Jig, and a drill. The whole thing took about three days to construct and about two days to paint 2 coats. If you see from the pictures that the side pieces of 1x4 trim are missing, you are right. When I measured the 34" instead of the 34 1/4" it was too short for the sides and wouldn't match up with the front trim. Even if I used the 34', there was a gap so I left it off. I added a fourth step and I also put grip tape on the stairs because my homeboy like to sleep in socks and I didn't want him to slip coming down.

So this was a bit harder than I imagined it would have been given it was my first time to try a plan from the site! The hardest thing was getting the middle beams cut correctly.

I shortened the length of the bench to 56" to fit our space and so that changed all of the angles (well, the angles on the center beam). The Kreg Jig is a must here and really helped.

This was my first DIY project and it turned out perfect. Thank you for the plans! Took me about two weekends. 

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!

We built our nesting box from scrap wood we had from an old barn we tore down and other scraps from previous projects. The dimensions were modified based on the width of the wood we had on hand. It's not very pretty, but it was free to make and will be inside a chicken coop. Our chicks are scared of it right now, but they are only 8 weeks old and not laying yet. I'm sure they will like it when they get used to it. 

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.