Community Brag Posts

This is an adaption of the shoe shrine shelves. Since I didn't have a closet or other room than the bedroom to put these, I put them on their side. I modeled these off the shoe shrine shelves.

Each cubby is 11 3/4 deep x 8 x8 for the long version. The 2nd version I made was only 48 inches wide and did not divide well so I simply left the center cubby wider. I also made the 48" version to have different height shelves for purses in the middle and flats on the bottom.

I basically flipped the shoe shrine's on their sides and added LED lights. This also inspired a tall version for a cubby we had upstairs.

I used a panel saw to cut the plywood and then assembled with a Kreg pocket hole jig for horizontal pieces and biscuits for the top and the dividers. I did not want to fill the holes or I would have used Kreg instead of the biscuits.

I used 3/4" paint grade plywood and a 1/4inch back panel.

LED lights came from LED wholesalers on amazon. This step requires electrical knowledge! Not much more than a wiring a light but do not attempt if you are not qualifed to do so. LED strings required a fine tip soldering iron, wire and heat shrink.

Love this plan and the table and bench turned out exactly as I hoped.  I did it by myself except for a little heavy lifting from my sweetheart. I researched the finish online and I am so happy with the results.

Wanted to make a table for my knife making projects. Often watch tutorials online so I built a frame to house 2 computer monitors and attached a spare laptop to the underside of table. Dimensions are pretty close to original plan, little taller (with the obvious height for back 2x4's. Sheet of plexiglass over monitors. Added baseboard trim to create "pool" for tabletop, adding a bottlecap epoxy top later.

Built the corner hutch from Ana's super easy plans!  LOVE IT!

http://www.ana-white.com/2010/12/plans/corner-cupboard

Made a cutout for my thermostat on the wall.  Gotta love building what you need for your space!

This was my first attempt at a farm table. I found the fancy x plan for inspiration. The length is 6ft. I had to modify all of the measurements. All of the boards came off my grandad's old barn. The posts are laminated together from guide posts from his corral. There is a lot of history and character to the table. I did have to make the bench to match it. I'll post pictures of that soon. Most importatnly, my wife loves it!!!! Happy wife, happy life!!!

Love my new bar stool, now to build 3 more.    I think it turned out great.

This closet tower is from the Craft Room Storage Tower plan, and made mostly with left overs from other projects. I wanted a shallow tower storage just deep enough to hang pants and slacks in, and to use a 12" wide door I already had in my garage. At Target I found some kid-size hangers that were just the right size - about 12" wide. Trouser hangers are about this same width, but they weren't available in-store so I went with what they had. The only things I bought for this project are the knob, hinges, some 1x2's, and the hangers. The sides are from a lengthwise half-sheet of C/D plywood, ripped down to 12" strips on the table saw, with 1x2 edge joined at the back to create a "toe kick" to clear the baseboard. The front is trimmed out in 1x2 with a scrap of 1x3 to trim the top. The removable closet poles are from a flagpole, and the ends are held in place with some 1/2" craft boards. The back is 1/4" plywood. The longest part of this project was the sanding, because the plywood wasn't the pretty kind - used lots of wood filler on the knots and as a grain filler, then sanded it a lot. This project took about 9 hrs total, (sanding took the longest), construction with the Kreg jig and nailgun was very quick, and then paint and adding the door and poles. The removable shelf was added as an afterthought and is a scrap of plywood, with some S4S to hold it up, and a 12" scrap of moulding across the front of the shelf. It is 82" tall, 13 1/2" wide, and 14 1/4" deep. It's a perfect pair with the 6-cube tower that I built from Ana's cube tower plans a couple of years ago.

I loved building this bench!!  I was able to use only 6 2x4's which cut down the cost a little bit :)  For the stain I used Semi-Transparent Chocolate from HD and Wedgewood in a Solid Stain color from HD as well.  Building the bench itself was really easy but the X's do take some extra work.  I found that using a yard stick vs. a tape measure made the world of difference.  I also nailed the X's in vs. using the kreg jig. 

We bought the house my husband actually grew up in. In the garage, on the wall, is theire family's height chart. When they moved taking it with them wasn't really do able. So, for Mother's day we wanted to give his mom a NEW (relocatable) height chart for her grandbabies.

One long board, another small board to insert at each foot mark, some house address numbers, and two different colors of stain, and we had what we wanted.

My husband made this in no time.

My wife and I love this table: http://www.woodlandcreekfurniture.com/graphics/DT00100NEW.pdf so I took the Farmhouse Table plan and modified it just a little bit. I used pocket screws to join the table top and eventually wound up installing 2x4 runners on the underside to sturdy the top even more. I also used my son to help keep the boards flush while I screwed them together. He though it was wonderful to help his dad out this way.

For the table frame I used a 1" straight bit in my router to put a little "flair" on the rail. The leg bracing is 1x1 scrap that I had left over from ripping the rail to size. I used my drill press on the bracing to make the recessed hole for the screws at the correct angle. I then covered the screw hole with a 5/8" red oak dowel.

I decided to go a little more traditional on the breadboard end just to see if I could do it. Its really not that hard just more time consuming. I used a 5/8" red oak dowel that I bought at the hardware store for joining the breadboard to the rest of the table top.

My table is made of a mixture of pine and spruce. I used shellac to seal the wood before staining. Shellac keeps these softwoods from splotching when they are stained. I then used Minwax Red Oak stain. I let the stain sit for about 15 minutes before wiping it off. The color turned out great. I used my Christmas money to buy an LVLP spray gun to hook up to my pancake compressor. I used the Spray-It 3000 to apply polyurethane. I put 5 coats on the frame and 10 coats on the top itself. In between each coat I used 0000 steel wool to buff the surface. The very last coat I left alone so it would shine. It left it with a little bit of an "orange peel" finish but I thought it made the table look more rustic so I left it alone.

All in all it took me about 60 hours over a 6 month period to get the table done. When you have a real job, kids, and a house to take care of it takes a while to do stuff like this.

I've got a plan for some chairs so I think I'm going to try chairs next. They say if you can build chairs you can build anything. I've built just about everything but chairs so maybe this saying will work in reverse. If the chairs go as fast as the table did, it might take another 6 months to get one done.

The wood for this table I got for free. My brother-in-law works in the lumber business and this wood was the throw away that none of the contractors wanted. All of it had been sitting in the sun and was warped, gray, and cracked. A friend from church who does woodworking for a living planed and jointed the boards straight and square for me. The lumber is construction grade pine and spruce. Most of the money I spent on this was for the spray gun, the finish, and the hardware that I used for joining the tabletop to the frame.

A help hint I found out after the fact. If you're sanding pine and spruce with a random orbit sander or any electric sander you are going to leave little "swirlies" throughout the wood. Either sand the wood by hand to prevent the "swirlies" or learn how to use a card scraper so you don't have to mess with sandpaper. The "swirlies" showed up when I applied the stain. Before then I couldn't see them. My wife thought the "swirlies" added to the rustic-ness of the table, so I left them alone.

We combined several ideas to create this built in mud room bench.  I searched high and low for the design I wanted and loved Ana's hidden storage.  It's perfect for off season stuff that would otherwise take up space in a closet.  It's such a pretty, functional space that gets so much use.  

This jewelry box is a gift for a friend at work who is retiring.   It is a variation of the Easy Jewelry Box, with the following modifications:

Hinged lift-up top with mirror

Overlay drawer fronts from ¼” craft wood (Gold stencil on top false drawer front, and drawer boxes are 1/8” shorter than the shelf from front to back, to ensure the fronts sit flat against the box front and drawer back doesn't touch the box back at all)

The bottom is 2 pieces thick, to allow space for the drawer overhang and attaching the bottom moulding.

Solid wood back (instead of plywood)

Top and bottom edged with mini stop moulding to make the overhangs, and added feet made from lattice

Removable drawer divider tray and 2 heights of removable dividers for the top, made from dentil, lattice and screen bead mouldings

I really took my time on this build to get everything just right with the build and the finish.   Probably spent about 6 hours spread out over the last few weekends.