Community Brag Posts

It was time for a new mattress - as it so happened, the store had a sale on: any size for the price of a single. So I couldn't resist and got the king rather than the queen size. Rather than buying the the bottom of the ensemble as well I decided to try and build a bed.
Would have loved a farmhouse bed, but the bedroom is tiny, the king only just fits in, so no foot end or chunky posts. Mom's fine farmhouse bed was the initial choice - but I like my timber `natural' and couldn't get pine mouldings. So ended up building the reclaimed headboard - out of cypress pine fence pickets: these come in 65x19mm (i.e. close to a 1x3 pine board) and up to 1800mm long, but used pine for the bits which are not visible (easier to work with & lighter). I wanted a bed where my feet touch the ground when I sit on the edge and which don't need to climb up to, so shortened everything to make the top of the mattress at 550mm from the floor.
The bed itself is from Mom's farmhouse bed plans, modified for a King (72 inches wide) with a middle rail. The sides are made from two length of cypress tongue and groove floorboards each, joined together with pocket hole screws and with the top tongues ripped off. The slats are fence pickets as well - managed to find enough of the nominally 1800mm ones which were just long enough to fit across after squaring off the ends, the most economical option. To hold them in place, I glued on spacer blocks cut from a 1x2 length of pine - the slats sit between them snugly & making the slats removable makes it much easier to move the bed.
I sealed the timber with a base coat of oil-based polyurethane and the applied furniture wax (carnauba) and buffed it to a soft glow.
This was a big project, it took me the best part of 4 weekends - lack of space & winter weather didn't help (ended up assembling the bed in the lounge room). It cost me almost $300 all up, about $220 for timber, the rest for screws, nails, sandpaper, glue, varnish, woodfiller and wax - half the price of what the commercial base alone would have been.

I used Anna's plan for the farmhouse table and shortened the length to fit my space. I liked the look of the angled 4x4's on the middle brace, but with my smaller table I had to make them into an X. Really pleased with the results. Thanks Anna for the inspiration!

I needed to build a loft bed for a small room that has a nine foot ceiling, I wanted to have ample storage room below, but was concerned about a ladder that would stick out at an angle taking up a little too much precious real estate in the small room.  Using Ana's great Sketch Up plans, I modified the design by incorporating a fifth leg as a permant addition to attach the ladder to.  Part of the appeal of Ana's design was the ability to take apart the bed if it ever needed to be taken out of the room it is installed in, and the ladder became a part of the foot board end, perhaps a little unwieldy, but still able for two people to lift and move.

As a self-taught woodworker, I wanted something a little nicer than standard pine boards, and since we have a nice local hardwood supplier in our town, I was able to buy some nice red oak in a 13/16" thickness.  This project gave me the opportunity to use the planer that I bought some time ago but hadn't really used very much, so I ended up milling all of the wood to bring all to a uniform thickness.  In gluing up the legs, I used a spreader and a lot of clamps so that there are no screws, staples or nails joining the boards, just a lot of Titebond II.   

For the ladder itself, I cut dados in the upright edges of the ladder and attached the treads with 2" wood screws along with a liberal amount of glue.  I had a slight miscaculation on the width of the ladder, so in order for it to fit in between the two legs, I had to plane away a small amount of wood, which you can see the end of in the last picture, the close up of the ladder.

After a fair amount of sanding and a round over bit in my palm router to break all the exposed edges, I finished with three coats of polyurethene.  The bed was assembled in the room using 2" wood screws which I had pre-drilled when I dry-fitted the bed out on my driveway.  There are three screws in each corner of the mattress board and two screws in each corner of the railing.  The short section of the front rail is also attached with screws so it can be removed as well if the bed is ever moved.  I finished the installation with three, six inch lag bolts, two higher up going into wall studs, one near the bottom bolting into the wall plate on the floor.  The bed was very solid, but has been made even more so with the addition of a bookshelf spanning the width of the footboard, and it is as deep as the ladder is wide.  I offset the side of the bookshelf on the ladder side to allow for a two inch gap so your toes can overhand the ladder treads when climbing up or down.

Custom Farmhouse Table built using plan by Ana White!

This was my second build and though it took longer than I'd hoped (as everything does with little helpers), I'm pleased with how it turned out. I deleted the arch in the plan and added trim on the edge of the 1x6s on the head and foot board to cover slightly larger gaps due to my poor spacing. Also, I was unable to find untreated 4x4s for the four posts so ended up using two 2x4s for each post (shown in the last photo). Otherwise, I followed the plan which made it fairly simple. If I can do this with a three and one year old and one on the way, anyone can! Thank you Ana for your inspiring and easy to follow plans as well as all of the great information provided on your website for beginners like myself!

Easy to build and look great!  And way cheaper than buying shelves.

Used your plans for a California King! Had to lengthen the bed by 4” to accommodate the comforter.

I had some leftover plywood after I made my storage bench and asher/dryer pedestal so I made plans for a storage ottoman with it. After I put it together I cam to Ana's site to upload my plan only to find out she had already made something similar. The only difference in mine is that I added a divider so my wife and I have our own sides and used polyester filling for the top instead of foam (about half the price).

Thanks for the plans!  My wife and cat love that cart, and I'm not sure who will win )))

This is my first build from Anna's plans.

Modern farmhouse bed for our cottage.

I pulled most of my ideas for this from the Farmhouse Bed and some of the modified brag posts. It's all pine - I didn't want to spend the extra for something harder, but it's triple finished, so that should help with durability.

We got a little creative on the woven back - love the way the 2 colors turned out!

My wife and I were originally going to build a different plan from Ana, but she wanted to have hanging barn doors and we found this and said PERFECT! I tweaked the plans a little for the height as it would be too close to tv (where will I put my turntable?! :P ) and started to build. Built it from all pine. The structure wasnt too bad and went together wonderful. Painted it up with an exterior grade paint for durability, but didnt like how easy it  would actually marr so I hit with three coats of spray polycrilic from minwax.

Due to time constraints and traveling every weekend, this took us all of a better part of 5 weeks to complete.

Made all the track from McMaster aluminum, some amazon pulleys for wheels, and some shoulder bolts w/ locknuts. This prevents from overtorquing the nuts down and binding the wheels :)

The TOP is my favorite part! I ordered a 13' piece of live edge pine slab w/ bark on from a mill in Ohio shipped to Florida, and had them rip it to my 92.5" length and the width I wanted for the top. Once I received I filled all the cracks/voids/knots with West Systems 2 part epoy, then sanded the entire unit from 80, 120, 220 grit. I used a belt sander to rip off any bark I couldnt pry off. Then some pre-stain, a very quick wiped off coat of Minwax Espresso, and 3 coats of spray on satin polyurethane (only 2 on bottom). Came out BEAUTIFUL!

Bought some TE brand LED light kit (5m) on amazon for $18 shipped and super glued to the shelf. Had to put a 0.50" hole on one side toward the front to pass the light string thru, and used electrical tape to black out the lights running vertical in the corner.  They are also programmable and color changing.

Table top is 92.5" long

Unit is 88.5" long

Beautiful piece that people have been raving about.

Thanks Ana for the plans!

Fancy Farmhouse King Bed

I loved this project as soon as I saw it on Ana's site. I made a few changes to the plans in order to suit my needs and also as an excuse to use my new tools. I left out the cross supports in order to accomodate storage underneath the stool and it still retains exceptional strength without the supports. I also used my new router to round the edges on the top peice to give it a more finished feel. I'm really happy with the results and have made multiple for friends and family, both painted and stained.