Community Brag Posts

I built this toy chest out of some beautiful oak. I used brad nails to tack on a sign I painted with his name. That can be removed later with little damage to the chest.

This was a kitchen for friends daughters birthday. I used my nail gun on this, made it so much easier:)

Thank you for the inspiration - I love how mine turned out!

was my project at collage on my first course self desian and cost of extra wood  £38  MATERIAL TO COVER  £25

We used Ana's farmhouse table plans. Everyone compliments us on it; even thought that we purchased it at Restoration Hardware.

This is the first wood working project I took on. My husband thought I should start with, like a birdhouse or something, but I'm a "go big or go home" kind of person (plus I hate birds), so I thought a seven piece sectional was the way to go. After a few lessons from him on the miter saw, I got the clear to work on the project solo. (My husband builds a lot of our furniture but I insisted I wanted to do this 100% myself...and he surprisingly agreed).

The first section took a really long time for me to do (maybe 4 hours), but considering I've never even so much as drilled a hole for a screw, I considered it a success. After that (and after I decided to go out and buy a Kreg Jig - best invention ever - and ditch the "knock off" I tried to buy/use), it was pretty smooth sailing from then on out. Aside from being time consuming, I was surprised at how easy the plans were to follow. Ana it truly amazing for publishing these.

From start to finish, it probably took me a month to complete (and THANK GOD we bought a paint sprayer in anticipation for painting the outside of our house, or I think it would've taken at least another week to finish). But that's also because I stupidly decided to sew all of the cushions/pillows myself. I just couldn't justify ordering pre-made ones for seven individual pieces (the price quote I was getting for that and what I wanted was close to $1,000 in itself).

Overall, I'm VERY excited/please with how it turned out. I priced out the West Elm sectional of this size and it would've cost us about six times what it cost us to build from scratch. I can't wait to take on the next project (after a much needed break...)

You may remember my green stratton day beds that I built a long time ago- finally I have another project to post- I am soo happy I found Ana White's website. We just got back from a 2.5 week vacation in Israel and my dogs were staying with my sister. She told me they had been sleeping in the same kennel together instead of separately. Their kennels are too small so I decided to build them one using wood I already had. But since they are small dogs, I decided to size it down- but I wanted it end table height- so I built a smaller kennel- 20"H x 19"W x 28"D. but... I added a drawer to the top to bring it to the right height. You can read all about it on my blog- link below.

Video link:  https://youtu.be/VfVbId3FeU4

A bookshelf to help with the everyday clutter in our kitchen.

First build and totally happy with result . The excitement and smiles of our 18 months old grand-daughter was worth every effort !

To bring a bit of order to my son's growing book collection, I built him a TIE fighter bookshelf. (By him I mean me, because he doesn't really care about TIE fighters. Chewbacca? Yes.) I was able to make use of some scrap lumber I already owned. Paint was the only item I purchased for the project.

I fell head over heals in love with Ana's Smiling Mudroom Project... but alas I have no mudroom in my home and no available closet to transform. *Sad Face* I do however have exactly the depth of a 1x10 between my front door and entryway wall. *Happy Face*

I modified her plans to fit a more narrow profile... (much more narrow) and also shortened it to about half the width.
I couldn't be happier with the finished product and I'm happy to share the modified plans with any of you who also lack a mudroom or any sort of entryway organization whatsoever!

Modified Mudroom Plans for an Entryway Locker System can be found here! Yay

This took me about a year to complete, start to finish, but there was a lot of downtime. I started by running the wires through the wall and taking the opportunity to add a ground to the outlet on this wall.

The bottom cabinets are from Ana's kitchen cabinet base plans, but they are a little shorter, shallower and do not have a toekick cut out. My hope is that this will serve as good practice to do an entire kitchen!! I built these based on my modified plans, pulled back the carpet (there is hardwood under them that I intend to expose at some point), popped off the baseboard, and installed these as if they were kitchen cabinets. The top is 6 pieces of whitewood 1x12's "Kregged" together - I wish I had used plywood but an entire piece would still not be long enough, so that was awkward either way. There is a simple piece of molding under the edge of the "countertop". At that point, not much got done all summer and we just had base cabinets with no uppers and no doors.

More recently, I finally got more time to work on this and created the upper shelves. I just kinda winged these. A whole bunch of 1x12's, I cut 4 the height of what I needed (about 5', from the countertop to the ceiling) and I made a bunch of shelves cut to size. I wound up making more shelves than we needed, but I put shelf pin holes in the vertical pieces so all of the upper shelves are adjustable! I used a kreg shelf pin jig and it worked great. The middle shelf above the TV was cut and added after everything else since I knew it would've been more difficult to calculate the length than to just measure after everything was in. I added some molding to cover up some things that didn't quite line up perfectly and to beef up the vertical pieces (1x2's make 'em look a little wider and cover the edges of the shelves). We finally have storage for all of the cd's and dvd's!!

I was a little nervous to do the doors, but the post for how to do doors came out at a perfect time. Turns out the hardware I bought way at the beginning was pretty cool and let you adjust up/down, distance from the cabinet, and left/right a few mm each way just by turning a screw. I'm glad I went with the fancy self-close-soft-close ones! I'm also in love with the handles I found.

I had some issues with the drawers and they don't slide perfectly, I think it's mostly a squareness issue. I'm planning on getting the kreg drawer jigs before I do the kitchen. I got the fancy soft close ones to see how they'd work to see if I want to use them in the kitchen, if I can't do a better job then I might opt for the cheaper ones!

I have intentions of adding crown molding to this room and that will go across the front of this when I do. I added a 1x4 across the top that can act as a base when we finally get around to that.

I originally got the idea to build a bed for my son when I needed to get something new for him and went looking online for beds for sale on Craigslist. I found a bed that looked like a barn and that made me search for plans to build one since why overpay for something you can build yourself?! I found Ana’s plan and knew immediately it was the one. I started at Thanksgiving and had it finished for Christmas. I can’t thank Ana and Jamie from That’s My Letter enough for such great plans. They were so detailed but easy to follow. I do all my own rehab work on my house and I am a weekend warrior carpenter so this was a really fun build. My son is about to turn 5 and is a huge Star Wars fan and so am I. I knew this had to be my theme so I bought him a bunch of stickers and a sign (couldn't help myself on this one, had to do the Jedi like my father sign) to decorate the bed on Christmas day. He was excited to get the stickers but he didn’t know I built this for him. I hid it in the garage the whole time and he never found out. So when we went to his room to see if for the first time he went nuts. My 2 year old daughter loved it too and they play in it together all the time. I had a few issues during the build with some measurements but was able to make it work. In the end I love it and so do the kids, especially my son! The window grilles take it to another level so I recommend them if you build this. I even sanded a lot of the edges around the windows and in the doorway to give it a more “weathered” look. I already have my next project chosen from Ana’s plans. I will hopefully be posting the results of the X desk build in the near future. Thank you Ana for all the plans, I will most definitely be showing this off and giving you credit every time. Chris

These two trash bins were very easy and fun to make. Plans were very easy to use and made the project very easy to build.