Community Brag Posts

My father loved his woodworking and refinishing antique furniture. He built a wood shop years ago and loved spending he retirement years in there. He enjoyed going to auctions and the like and picking up antique pieces for $5 and $10. He had an antique oak dining table that someone had given him years ago. Cancer took him 4 years ago and he still has that shop full of antiques. I came across the old table and it was in sad shape. It was literally in several pieces and the legs were cracked. I decided to refinish the table.

I had some oak plywood and 1" by oak left over from other projects. I went ahead and removed all of the bracing and replaced all of it. I began stripping off all of the old finish. The underside of the table had been painted. The legs were the real challenge. Not only were the legs turned, they are fluted. I stripped off what I could with liquid stripper. I then used a power washer to help remove more. I then began sanding by hand every nook and cranny. I then filled all of the little cracks with wood filler. I used pin nails on the larger cracks. Once everything was stripped I began seeing a beautiful patina that only time can create.

I then began staining with Minwax Aged Oak gel stain. I used 2 coats on parts and up to 4 coats on other parts trying to get a uniform appearance to the wood. I used between 3 and 6 coats of Minwax quick drying polyurethane on the table. I sanded with 220 and 320 grit sandpaper between coats. I think it turned out pretty well.

The only thing I really had to buy was new casters. I think I spent about $10 for them. Everything else was left over from other projects. I worked on the project here and there between other projects I was working on. I think I probably had around 20 hours total on the project. Stripping and sanding the legs took the longest time. Somehow I think dad is smiling down at me when I finish his projects he had on the back burner.

Made this loft bunk a few hours at a time, over the course of several months. Spare time and weather in Utah has been less than cooperative. I used some back pack strapping screwed to 1x3's for the mattress supports. For the finish I used 2 coats of paint with primer, and 3 coats of high use water base polyurethane. With a 5 and 7 year old I didn't want to be worried the paint would be getting dented and chipped off for a long time. I wanted to stain it originally but failed to remember to wipe off the wood glue before it dried so it got painted. This was a very fun project to build, my son loves it. Now to build another one for his sister.

I made several changes to the original Ana White plan. I wanted to build a bar height table for my husband's man cave. I left the length at 5ft long, but instead of dinner table height, I raised it to be a bar top. It perfectly accomodates typical bar height stools, as seen in the picture. 

www.withlovefromgablog.blogspot.com

I had always wanted a bigger entry way at my front door. Last year my husband was gone for 3 weeks (military training) and I had the perfect opportunity to make it happen.

as you can see the original closet took up half of the entry way, and was not very functional as far as storage. It was always crammed full of stuff and there was just no good way to organize it.

With the help of my mom and sister (huge thanks) we tore out the closet, put in a new floor in the entry way, built a bench with nooks for my girls, shelves below for shoes, and shelves above for storage containers.

The new floor was added as we found after the closet was out that the oak flooring did not continue under where those walls had been, and after consulting with a wood floor specialty guy, I was informed that the flooring in my house has not been made for some 50 years now. We added new flooring (which has been better with wet shoes anyways) and moved on.

The bench/ shelf was built by us with the size of the space in mind, and the height of the tallest shoes also in mind (my husbands boots) there are two cubbies and enough bench to seat one at a time to get shoes on or off. the back of the cubbies is painted in magnetic paint. very helpful when the girls need to take notes to school with them, I simply hang them up and they stuff them in their back packs on the way out the door. we have found that friends pictures go up through the school year there too. The round black containers that you see are perched along the top two shelves. They are $1 discounted, plastic garbage cans that I spray painted black to match. They have recently been labeled, gloves, hats, scarves, flip flops, out door chalk, etc. the very top shelf which you need a step stool to reach hold the off season bins and the lower shelf holds the in season bens. there are also 2 bens below the bench seat to hold, flip flops or gloves and hats for easy access for my girls.

Over all, the overhaul (:) has been great. people can now actually get into my house and out of the weather more then one at a time. the storage is much more efficient, and I feel much cleaner looking.

and best of all, because I like to change things up all the time, I can change out the bins to square or rectangle and any other type of material, anytime I like, I wont always have to stick with the repurposed garbage cans that I am using now. although these suckers hold a lot more then I ever would have thought.

This was my first really big project. and I am pretty proud of it. - And my husband actually thought he was in the wrong house when he came home from training :)

72L x 18W x 36H

Made a few subtle changes. Excellent plans. Clear and easy to follow. Thank you.

mini farm house tables

My brother-in-law built this plan as an end table for my wife and I as a present. We wanted to build a hallway table, so I decided to modify the plan to fit in the long hallway. It looks great and is very sturdy. I listed it as a weekend project, but it was VERY easy and fast to build, but the finishing took a while because of so much surface area & drying time.

Took be about 2.5 weeks to build this bed, working evenings and a couple full days on the weekend. I HIGHLY recommend getting a Kreg Jig. It made life so much easier.

To go from a queen to a king, simply add 16" to all of the width pieces. All of the length pieces will be the same for a queen and king.

I added one 2x2 support beam down the middle of the bed, with two 16 3/4 inch legs attached to it, for added support.  I screwed the slats into all 3 of the 2x2 support beams.

The drawers are the trickiest part. Make sure you follow the plan in order, waiting to install the drawers until after you have screwed the storage bins to the headboard and footboard.

2X4 Simple Potting Bench.

This goes into the mud room next to the recycling unit that I just completed the other day. My first project out there was a wooden bench with re-claimed wood. Very simple. I finished all three pieces similar. I painted grey paint on parts of the pieces (two coats) and then used a clear polyurethane (two coats with sanding before and in-between) on the rest of the projects.

This project was easier then I expected, and I love the look. I almost bought one like this at Ikea last year. So glad I held off as this was way cheaper to build and now has more sentimental value instead!

I was able to find brown bins to fit at target.com for $6.50 a piece, and can't wait for them to ship here. 4 of the 6 will be used for shoe bins, and the other 2 will be used for hats and mittens (live in Minnesota). So much neater looking than the plastic shoe shelves we had before.

FYI: there is a cut missing on the cut list: It is the bottom piece. The cut is 28 3/4" and is not mentioned on the list or in the diagrams....

Made a smaller version of the fire truck bed for our two boys. The youngest will move "downstairs" when he gets out of the crib. It was fun, but lots of work! It took me about 5 weeks of weekend/late evening work.

Thanks for the great plans and inspiration.

Connected Adirondack Chairs from Spring of 2015

I loved every part of this project! I did it all by myself except for having the nice man at Home Depot cut all of the pieces for me (thank you tony! :) ). I had to buy all of the tools and found what I needed at a local flea market, and spent no more that $15 each tool. It was great. I have enough left over scrap lumber to build a coffee table of some sort next. Thank you so much for the plans, they were super easy to read and follow! I was able to find cushions at Home Depot as well, although they are not displayed in the picture since i love the stained wood so much. Since it is fall they were marked down to only $25/each which is a HUGE discount from previously being $90. The cost of the cushions will be the most expensive part of this project for sure, so make sure you can find what you want first before you get into this project if you have a strict budget for it!

I made this from the Ana White Build a $10 Cedar Tiered Flower Planter or Herb Garden plans. It was a quick and easy fun project to work on.

I built this closet system based on the plans here.  So easy and so basic, just putting them all together to make a very nice looking closet setup.  I used 12 sheets of birch plywood, and premium select 1x2 pine.  All stained in Minwax Jacobean and satin clear througout with semi-gloss clear on the drawer fronts.

For the rods, I used chainlink top bars, which cost $6 for a 10' piece, and used #0000 steel wool to buff them out and then polished them.  For the 45 degree corners, I used 1" electrical conduit, and placed two 45 degree bend in each piece, and again steel wool and polished them as well. 

For the drawers, I used soft-close slides.  When using these, I highly recommend installing the rear brackets as well, as they make installation so much easier.  16 pairs of soft-close drawer slides with brackets cost $120 for all of them on Amazon.