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I moved from a big apartment to a small house and I needed more horizontal space. Shelves look great in use and are very stable. All the newbie mistakes in picking wood, cutting and sanding fade into the background.

What did I learn? - This is one time when getting the nice dressed lumber is worth it since they laminate better. I spent a lot of (useless) time applying wood filler trying to get the gaps invisible. - Get the scraps out of the way ASAP so I don't keep confusing them with the cut pieces. - It's hard to set the miter saw to the "same" 10 degrees more than once since its not a preset on the miter saw, so do all the angled cuts at the same time. -For some reason, one shelf was shorter than the rest.

Used the plans to make a desk for my girls!

I based these off of the mini farmhouse bedside table plans, but changed a lot of the dimensions, added sides/back and chose to use plywood for the top, sides and shelf. The plywood did not stain very nicely for me- I learned my lesson! The drawers were definitely the hardest part!

I built these floating shelves to put in my kiddo's bathroom.  They come together easily and add a ton of charm to his bathroom!  These are a great beginner project.

These beds were the very first thing my hubby and I ever built! We had an old hand saw with a dull blade and a hammer and nails! It took us 7 full Saturdays to complete these beds and that includes all of the finish work. We had a great time and a not so great time building these beds but the memories we built together are priceless! We are so proud of the blood, sweat and tears that went into these beds! We love you Ana, well, mostly I love you! You changed my life and I am officially addicted to building! If you have time, check out my very long but very entertaining post about building these beds!
http://isteppedoutofmycomfortzone.blogspot.com/2010/09/and-built-bed.ht…

In need of a new coffee table and having a budget lower than what would allow for similar looking store bought tables, I decided to build a variation of the Rustic X coffee table. I used the modified plans by Pete Sveen which included the bread boards on the table top. We used a solution of white vinegar and steel wool to age the wood and used a clear furniture wax to finish it.

This is the 2nd step stool I built, the first was for my daughter and I just followed the plans. Built this for my friends son Hayden, decided to add the H for his name. It was a tag team build, I built it and painted it and my wife did the sanding, distressing and wax sealer. 

I made this for a friend who has two little ones that are less than two years old. Although I enjoy the ease and convenience of the Kreg jig, I wanted to try something more difficult for this. So for the sides I used mortise and tenon joinery for the ladder rungs and top arches. The only screw I used we to place the hinges and attach the feet. I also didn’t like the gap in the platform that would have been caused by my 1x8 actually only being 7.5 in wide, so I made my own platform by joining the edges of two pieces of wood (one was 11 inches and the other was 6 inches wide). After clamping and lettting the glue dry, I trimmed up the platform to size. Due to the modifications the project took well over 20 hours, but was a fun challenge. 

I still need to build a matching chair so we have a pair of adirondack chairs for around the fire pit. More pics of the build at my blog.

This bed was made as a Christmas present for my parents. At the time, there were no plans for a king-sized bed so I modified the queen plans to fit their mattress. I added a 5th leg to support the center of the bed and also added some plywood sheets underneath to better support the mattress.

This was a super fun build for me!    I have been wanting to do it for a long time, but was a little intimidated with the hardware.   I bypassed the expensive kits you see online and built my own from aluminum flat bar, carriage bolts, and sliding door pulleys.  I am very pleased with the overall project and wish I would have done it sooner!   Shortened down to 6', and I opted to make 3 "openings, with the middle being the same as the outers, doubled, to insure the doors matched up.

This started out as the Outdoor Multipurpose Cart....and after my hubbies evergrowing wishlist, it quickly become THE GRILL TROLLEY EXTRAVAGANZA!!!! I added the bulk and the height which he wanted, a John Boos butcher block 24x18, which is removable. Funny thing is, I also sampled Ana's Farmhouse frame to cradle the butcher block! I didn't want to put any holes in the 100 clam butcher block so it has it's own little bedframe. It's totally waterproofed and stained since it's new home will be beside the pool. I used all Kreg joints, so you could sit on this it's so sturdy. I also added 2.5 inch locking casters for the bottom. There's a stainless steel bathroom towel rack which doubles as a handle, lots of hooks for his BBQ paraphenelia, and the most important addition...The Guinness bottle opener. Totally hubby customized. And the best thing> I did it myself, setting it aside whenever a problem arose, but always coming back to it. This was originally a Papa's day present

This was totally my first real build. Like most others I modified the plans to fit in my mother-in-law's dining room. I used 4x4s for the legs and built two benches to go with it.

I built this for my daughters house warming gift.

This was my first real project from start to finish. We bought rough lumber from The Home Depot.  Between having a toddler, tweenager and a life it took about a month of sporadic work but it was a great bonding project for my husband and I.  Guess the overachiever in me should have seen that one coming, I wanted have the full experience of jointing our own wood.  I learned a lot and had a lot of fun working with the table saw, miter saw, jointer, and kreg jig, all of which my husband already owned.  I did not use any glue on this project simply because I wanted to avoid the mess.  The best part about this project was the easy measurements..I'm not too good with the confusion.  It made it so much easier when cutting, specifically the 45degree angles. 

We purchased our first LCD TV, which meant we needed a new entertainment center to put it on. We looked at quite a few furniture stores and couldn't believe the price tag on the big centers. I wanted more than just a TV stand, so I convinced my husband to help me build an entertainment center ourselves. I looked at a lot of different entertainment centers, even a few on this site, and then I drew up a picture of what I was envisioning, tweeking things here and there (I have three little kids so I needed to make sure the center piece was high enough to keep little fingers off my expensive TV, and I also knew I wanted all Satellite Receivers and DVD players out of reach), and we went to work figuring out dimensions. We designed the TV opening around the exact dimensions of our new TV (it's a 46" tv, if that helps you imagine the opening size) and then figured out the rest of the dimensions after that. Once we had the dimensions figured out, my husband went to work calculating what materials we would need. Then we got to work. We built the center in four different pieces (two side shelf units, the middle bottom stand, and the middle top piece). We spent every night for the next week working in the garage to build the entertainment center, and it turned out absolutely beautiful! And the best part? The price, of course. In total, we spent $546.00. That includes wood, trim pieces, paint, primer, hardware (knobs and hinges). Not too bad for a beautiful entertainment center made of real hardwood!