Community Brag Posts

Living room console. Three-quarter inch birch ply, and one by two clear grain pine.

I made these ledges with pine and white wood, 4' long. I wish I had used pocket hole screws to connect them, but instead I just counter-sank the screw holes and butt jointed the boards with wood screws. I filled the screw holes with 5/16" wood plugs and sanded them down flat. Then I sanded, stained, varnished, and sanded again.

Please see my process below on my blog.

Thanks, Ana!

First Project...Used pine for the base and oak for the top to match home counter top.

We sanded, stained, painted, and distressed the wood before building. That was truly the most time consuming part. The plans were great and everything went together smoothly! We decided to take off the top 2 planks from the footboard, and used those as the side rail. We created the ladder from what we had on hand. 

I chose to adjust the great design to have a free standing tree with backing and a live bark base. Fun project.

I love this antique workbench console b/c it's the perfect mix between my desire for beautiful and my husband's desire for rustic hunting lodge. (Southern girl meets Minnesota hunter - LOL). It's just a gorgeous antique look, but for far less money. I have haven't put the towel bar on the front yet b/c I keep forgetting to buy it (it's amazing how shopping with toddlers can do that to you). And in my area, mounted bottle openers are only available online, so we need to order one. I used standard stud grade 2x4's for the console, and 1x6's for the planked backing of the hutch. I also dropped the bottom shelf to the natural resting place at the bottom of the legs/top of the feet. It was so much easier for me that way as a beginner, and I really think it still looks great. This was my first Kreg Jig project - and it was so so easy. Ana is totally telling you the truth when she says it's completely worth the money to buy one. My father-in-law is a very well seasoned carpenter and wanted one after he saw some of the furniture I've built with it as a beginner! (We bought him one, of course, b/c he's awesome.)

My neighbor loaned me a shop vac and a palm sander to refinish a table, and I fell down a rabbit hole. This is the Brooke Mid-century Console Table from this site. I need to touch up paint the front, and it's not perfect, but this was my first woodworking project. I think the hardest part was wrestling with the drawer slides; I think I had to remount them three or four times. There was plenty of swearing involved with the Euro hinge as well.

I took a "Woodworking: Your Own Projects" class at the local community college, but this project was almost entirely self-taught (although I had plenty of adult supervision while learning to use the saws.)

I bought most of the materials from Building Materials Resources, a local reclaimed building supply store. And then took about a million trips to the local big box home supply stores for "just one more thing."

I had originally stained the project with Minwax Sedona Red and put some wipe-on oil-based poly on it, but the drawer fronts came out blotchy because I had used wood putty over the brad holes, so I painted those and the door brown ("Polished Mahogany" SW2838.) Then the edgebanding that I had applied on the front and stained was peeling off and looking terrible, and I didn't want to redo it.

I gave up and scuff-sanded the whole thing and painted the rest of it blue ("Still Water" SW6223.) I then applied several coats of semi-gloss spray water-based polyurethane, sanding lightly inbetween coats. I finished it off with a coat of Howards Feed N Wax and 0000 steel wool.

One tip that I have is that you can buy enormous (quart sized!) paint samples at Sherwin Williams for about $5 apiece. I used a paint sample for the brown portions, and a "real" quart of paint for the blue portion, and I cannot tell the difference in quality.

Skills learned:
Drilling pilot holes (believe it or not)
How to use the Kreg jig
How to use a miter saw
How to use a circular saw
How to use a table saw
Applying edgebanding
Applying wood filler
Staining
Building drawer boxes
Installing drawer pulls
Installing drawer slides
Installing euro-hinges (and how to use a Forstner bit)
How to use a brad nailer
How to attach table legs
Probably some other stuff that I forgot

Thanks for the plans!

Curly maple blanket chest with teak top for daughter’s Christmas.

This is the first Ana White plan I've used and my first project with a Kreg Jig. It was so easy! I used 6' long lumber. This ledge is 4' long and I have a 2' ledge in the living room.

I started this project without a cutting table or any kind of shop set up. I used a burnt out tree as my makeshift cutting table. With only hand tools I used Ana Whites blueprints from her website to do this whole table, the directions were very easy to
follow and very helpful.

Took a canopy bed plan but made it to look like a house for my grandson.  

He loves it! 

Child's chair. I used wormy maple

This media center was my hubby and I's very first project! It was definitely a learning experience and its definitely not perfect, but we love it! We love how much it looks like the pottery barn version and that WE MADE IT!!!

This project took us quite some time to complete..... and its still not 100% done as we still need hardware for the 2 outermost doors but are having a hard time finding ones similar to the pottery barn ones that aren’t going to cost us a fortune..... My hubby and I put this together piece by piece as we had time (which seemed to be few and far between). If you had uninterrupted time to work on this , one could probably start and finish it in a weekend. But because of lack of uninterrupted time and the learning curve of this being our first project it took us months to finish.

We got the TV base (the bottom middle piece) done first and we were so excited about it that before attempting the rest of the project, we painted it and set it up in the living room :) We were so excited to get the rest of the media center made but my hubby got busy with work and was unable to help me. I got antsy, so antsy in fact that finished the rest of the project COMPLETELY on my own!! And I am SO PROUD OF IT!!! I made and painted the rest of the media center except for the doors because i (not sure why) was completely intimidated by the doors so I procrastinated making them, so the media center sat in the living room for a month or 2 without doors or the adjustable shelves on the towers lol. Last week I finally got up the courage to make the doors and they (to my surprise!) really weren’t that bad!! I painted them and the adjustable shelves and finished assembling the media center. Its now finished and decorated except for some of the door hardware!!! SO EXCITED!!!

Since this was our first project we hadn’t bought a Kreg Jig jet (we have since bought one) and I HIGHLY recommend getting yourself one. It would have made this project so much easier.

We built this outdoor table and benches using Western Red Cedar for a patio area outside our house.   The cedar is pricier than doug fir or other woods, but is highly rot resistant and the best choice for an outdoor table.  We used Ana White's 4x4 Truss Beam Table and Benches plans and Kreg blue kote screws since they are weatherproof.   The breadboards were a little wobbly, so we reinforced them with black metal corner braces (http://www.truevalue.com/product/Hardware/Miscellaneous-Hardware/Corner…) and black coated exterior screws (http://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-12-x-1-1-4-in-Phillips-Flat-Head-Wo…).   These braces provide a cool architectural look and provide much needed support for the table ends, and especially the bench ends.    We stained the Western Red Cedar with Minwax Weathered Oak and finished it with two coats of Man O War Spar Urethane in Satin finish.   Hopefully it will stand up to the elements and last for years to come.   Thanks for the plans Ana!

We made this a bit taller then the plan. But everything worked out well. It was our first project. I would NOT recommend this as a first project. Also, wipe the stain off quickly. We let it sit way too long and it came out very dark. It took us a long time to build because we both work. And, Home Depot didn't cut miters so we had to get a neighbor to do it.... fyi

I love it though.

These nightstands span the entire wall of our master bedroom. My husband's side features a mini-fridge, whereas mine has a space for an ottoman that I have yet to buy (or make?). It is a combination of the "Modern Nightstand" and the "Parsons Desk".