Community Brag Posts

I wanted to try a high gloss finish on unstained pine and this seemed like a great project to try it out. I can’t believe how often I use this tray. Now I don’t know how I got by without it! Thanks for the plans!

Built this American Girl Wardrobe from Ana White's plans for two of my daughters and my niece.  They turned out absolutely adorable! I used scrapbook paper for the back of the wardrobe to mimic wallpaper and modge podged over for durability.  I built all three at once!  Put all three wardrobes together in one night, but took a few weeks for caulking and painting, filling and sanding.  Think I paid around $45 each for supplies when all was said and done.  I think they are going to love these and are built so well I am hopeful they pass them on to their kids some day.  Love the idea and plans, spot on!

Coffee table 

This project took me longer than most because I had to wait to borrow a circular saw for the ply wood base. This is my second completed project and the biggest challenge for me was getting the frame and drawer square.

It lives up to it's name as the "20 sec tidy up". My living room already looks a million times better. I'm going to build a few crates for playing cards.

Have made many of these as you can see.  The plan is easy to follow and easy to modify to suit your needs,  Wonderful site #anawhite

I built this bed for my daughter. I used the Hailey Bed plans. It wasn't hard and got it done rather inexpensively.

Needed a less massive entertainment center for my itsy bitsy living room.This plan was perfect we shrunk it down a bit width wise. Easy to build only took us a day to build and me a couple of weekends to paint! LOVE

Followed instructions and became a fun day project using primarily 1x2's, Kregs jig and glue. Hardest part of this project was keeping our daughter out of Santa's workshop. Thanks to a previous brag post, I used wood shims as an idea for a roof and added the raffia to give Santa hero powers on Christmas morning.  Wood/shims were purchaed at HD; stain, hinges and clasps from a Re-store; raffia from a craft store.  All in probably cost around $40 total with wood and shims being $30 of that.  Note: if you decide to shingle using glue, plan for a LOT of shims and a full bottle of glue if not more. I cut the shims in half to give me double the amount for use. 

Stain/finish and shingles added 2 extra days to this project.

My IG Builders Challenge 2016 Piece

First piece I have ever build by myself.  I decided to go with a vintage travel theme.  Drawers were decoupaged with old map look wrapping paper and then distressed a bit.  Suitcase handles painted and distressed serve as the drawer pulls.  I even rusted up the metal on them...including the tiny screws!  For the top, I decided to beat up the wood with hammer, chains, etc. and then stain in dark walnut.  On each corner of the top I placed metal brackets which I also soaked in a vinegar rust solution to age them and then attached using some decorative upholstery tacks.  For the body, I decided to go with American Paint Company paint.  It's thick and easy to create lots of texture.  I layered two colors...Beach Glass as the base coat and Home Plate on top.  In order to achieve an aged, parchment paper type look, I used dark wax.  The dark wax sinks into all the yummy texture creating the look I wanted to get.  Additionally, I stenciled the words:  Explore Dream Discover across the bottom. 

This was for our mudroom, obviously. I wanted to use up some ply that I had ill-advisedly had the store cut into quarters, so each of my storage compartments are 48" long, supported in the center by that divider piece you see in the second pic.

The beauty of DIY of course, is that you can modify everything. But if you do, you spend a week on a 4-hour project (but you do use up a lot of scraps). I cut nearly every piece out of plywood with the exception of the 1x3 front legs. It was time-consuming, but I think it was worth it as it allowed me to impulsively deepen the storage from 3.5" to 5". It also meant I only had to purchase the cedar, one pine 1x3, and a hinge.

The top is bare cedar boards which we'll allow to weather naturally. The hinge is the longest piano hinge they had at the blue store at about $7. The white is just a base Behr ultra with no tint because it's classic and we already had it.

This TV stand was built from the plans of the Planked wood sideboard. I made it a bit shorter only 6ft and made shelving in the middle instead of another storage space. Each side has a shelf in the middle and we store DVDs in them along with some of our childrens puzzels and games. I stained it Walnut and love the look of the rough wood. All of our guest cant believe that its homemade and not purchased from a store. 

My dad wanted to make something for my husband and my first dog.  When I saw this crate I shared it with my dad.  He was on board and did a great job!

Absolutely love my new shoe cabinet! Saw the original plan on Pinterest in distressed black. Downloaded and asked hubby if he would build this for me and he did! I finished it with Colonial White oil base paint and distressed it with sand paper, hammer, steel wool and paint spatters.

One of the coolest features .... the knobs which are wooden thread spools cut in half.

The cabinet holds 11 pair of shoes and 3 pair of short boots.

Finished with walnut stain and Million Dollar Red. Wood is all reclaimed from local deconstruction company.

I built this bed in about a week.  It was a big project but very rewarding. The plans I had from Ana White were easy to follow and detailed, and having the shopping list and cut list was very helpful.  It was pretty straightforward with mostly right angles.  It may be a bit much for a beginner, but someone with some basic woodworking and building skills should have no trouble.  It’s very heavy and needs to be assembled in pieces.  The roof shingles were made by using 1/4 plywood cut into rectangular squares and painted black and stapled on.  It was a nice touch. The pergola was also a nice addition, as was the staircase with bookcase.  I bought a remnant from a carpet store for 10 and tacked it in the stairs and it’s very comfortable. The drawers were a lot of work but again worth it.  Our now 4 year old is in love with her bed! 

My 7 year old nephew, Jack loves the San Francisco Giants, so my brother and I decided to create an AT & T Park bed using Ana's Camp Loft Bed plans as a guide. I started with the scoreboard to hang above the bed. The teams are all hand painted and hung with Velcro so Jack can arrange the teams according to their current league standings. He can also decide who he wants to play and change the teams on the actual scoreboard, which is painted with chalkboard paint.

The bed was created using Ana's plans. We added brick facade columns to make it look more like AT & T Park. The columns have shelves in the back built in for storage. I found some great Giants stickers and added them as well.

Under the bed, I built a locker using Ana's Small Locker Cabinet plans for Jack to hang and store all of his athletic gear.