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These four raised beds are just the beginning!!!!

I hate the mess of my garage. If there was just one more room for photos, I would show you what I was working with: a piece of plywood propped on two saw horses, with loads of supplies taking up every last inch of space. I was beginning to wonder why I didn't want to go into the garage, what I hoped would be my haven after a crazy day of singing the ABC's with my 3 year old and giving chemo treatments to my 6 year old with leukemia.

Then it dawned on me: I'm not organized!!! I start to get the shakes if things are not in their place. So, I started to dream up my perfect work bench, one place where I can store my main necessities.

I don't work well without plans. Of course it dawned on me too late to contact Ana herself to help me. But when I thought about it, I realized that it was basically a box. Just start with a box. So I checked out a few of Ana's plans that started out as a box and went from there. By the way, I couldn't have gotten through 1% of this project without Ana and the inspiration and encouragement from her site. Love you!! Anyway, I knew I wanted drawers on one side and shelves on the other. As I went along I decided to add a few contained shelves on the side of the bench to store the wood glue, wax, and other smaller items. On the other side of the bench (because I HAVE to make use of all space), I saved the cans from some crushed tomatoes I had used to make a sauce, and used some hose clamps to keep them in place. I keep all my brushes in these babies. I made the shelves adjustable and decided that looking at the back of the drawers was undesirable, so I purchased a $5 curtain and stapled it in place to hang behind the shelves hiding the drawers -- so girly! Gotta have that little feminine flavor to my work bench (as if the color didn't do it enough).

The drawers were the biggest hassle because I made a very bad builder mistake. I rushed them and I don't even think I took out a square once to make them. Bad builder. Bad, bad, BAD BUILDER!! I was tired and was in such a hurry to finish this so I could get organized and the shakes would stop. So, in the end, the drawers don't work perfectly and I'm constantly reminded of my shortcut every time I open them. (And every time my husband reminds me as he helped me with the drawer slides and cursed the whole time.) Each drawer is trimmed out differently as I was just using the different wood and choices I had laying around. The knobs were a great flea market find at 25 cents a pop.

In the end, I love her. I'm organized, or as organized as I can be right now. Besides my power tools, I have everything at my fingertips. And if the garage becomes a mess again, I know it won't be because my stuff doesn't have a home. And with this paint color, I'll be able to find her no problem. :) Oh yea, that is a beer on top. I deserved it.

Loved this plan from the time Ana posted it long ago, but never had a need to build one until we moved into a new house.

I followed the plan entirely as instructed, except for the faux 2 drawer feature. It went together great. The most difficult part is making sure you keep everything square and you'll definitely want a kreg jig (I have a kreg jig jr and it works great) to keep the assembly as easy as possible.

I built it over the course of one weekend, but it took most of the next week to stain and apply polyurethane. Lots of drying time involved.

I spent around $50 total to build and another $16 for polyurethane and the handle. The stain I already had, but that would be another $10 or so, if you needed to purchase.

The direct link to the plan: http://ana-white.com/2011/01/farmhouse-bedside-table

Great project and plan to do do a second one for the other side of the bed.

This was quite the project. It was the most fun and rewarding of the handful I've done so far. It took quite a while but now that it's finished I'm very satified. I would like to eventually build an extra large dresser that matches.

***The one thing that I am not totally happy with on this project are the euro drawer slides. They are loud and they have a cheap chinsy feel to them. When I build drawers in the future, I will either spend more and get fancy slides, or make some simple waxed wood slides for a more premium feel.

Made for daughter’s first apartment.

Rusty O.

I took shop class for a quarter in eighth grade, but other than that, I have never constructed anything out of wood! I decided to pick a small project first and loved the Kid's Storage Step Stools I saw people making. My husband taught me how to use the circular saw and jigsaw and I finished building this in about 2 hours.

This was my second Ana build. I picked the cooler out of someone trash. (the wheels had broke off) Thank you brick house!!! I been wanting to do this plan for a while now, I'm just too cheap to buy the cooler.
The cooler stand plans were nice to have. I had lots of scrap from my hubby but I did have to buy two 1x3x8 to finish the lid. I had trouble with the lid lining up with the cooler. With the hinged attached to the lid, I lined up the cooler, mark it out and re-screwed it to the cooler . Easy. Next time I'll go to Habitat for Humanity or the like for the hardware. I will also remember to finish the wood before assembly. I didn't put the drain in the stand. After inspection of the cooler if won't drain completely if I did, so let it off.
It took me almost a week to finish between mom duties, volunteer work, and church but she's done.
Thanks Ana for the plans. I couldn't have done it without them.

Used treated wood.  Stain was BEHR PREM SOLID STN REDWOOD.

Rustic modern table I built out of 2x4’s and 2x10’s.

Using Ana's Ten Dollar Ledges project, we created these shelves for our children's rooms. They were so easy to make and paint and hang. We absolutely love them and so do the kids! Our shelves were 32" long to fit in a particular spot. The shelves also cost a little more than the price listed in the plans. Perhaps my husband bought a higher grade of wood. I'm not sure, but it was worth it regardless. You can see more of our kids' rooms and our old house renovations at our blog Lovely Chaos.

I wanted to make a built in storage bench for the breakfast nook in our eat-in kitchen, but wasn't entirely sure how to go about the process. After seeing Ana's "Mimi's Storage Bench" I thought the plan could be modified to fit our space, so I convinced my husband to give it a shot. We've done a fair amount of carpentry in our house, but this is the first piece of furniture that we have ever built. Thanks to Ana's plans and our new Kreg jig, it turned out better than I ever imagined. We absolutely love the new bench, where my toddler spends every morning eating his breakfast while staring out the window and giggling at the squirrels in our backyard.

I made my first dining table using pocket holes. About a week after I sold it, I ended up having to go to the lady's house and put one of the legs back on it. I quickly realized pocket holes were great for most things, but dining table legs might not be the best. Ever since then, I've been using dowels to reinforce pocket hole joints on table legs. So far it's been a great solution. Here is a video explaining how it works. Hope you like it. Patrick

Turned out beautifully for our master bedroom!

This is the first of 3 raised garden beds based on Ana's plan found here: raised garden beds. My and our twin 5 yr old daughters' job this weekend is to fill them. CAN'T WAIT!

MODIFICATIONS
He added a board to the top to make them a little higher. Our first set of boards came from Home Depot, and this box came to around $30. The boards are really rough, so we may sand them a bit as we have little kids and don't want TOO many splinters. Our next 2 boxes will be made from materials from another chain here in Minnesota, Menard's, and they are much smoother (and cheaper - on sale this week for $1.50 a board!)

We also had a really hard time finding outdoor 1" screws, so he used 1 1/4" ones and didn't countersink them.

I am also planning on putting in some landscape fabric inside to help keep weeds out and water/dirt in, since the seams are porous.

We followed Ana's plans to the letter and every cut, every corner, everything turned out perfectly! We put about 3 hours into the bench on day one, and finished up on the second day with stain and polyurethane. The only change we made was to make it slightly shorter and have less overhang on each edge.
Thanks Ana!!

Awesome plans!  Followed everything and it came out great.  Thank you soooo much, my son loves it!!!

Floating Bed