Community Brag Posts

I followed the basic plans for the kent wood nightstand but made a few changes. I made paneling out of 3/4" plywood for the sides and door/drawer and routed a 1/2" by 1/2" channel into the face frames to slide the panels in. I added a drawer and made the door smaller. Instead of using the strips of wood for the top I framed it with 1x3's and inset a piece of Wedi tile underlayment. Wedi is a closed cell foam that is coated with a cement membrane. It is pretty durable and completely waterproof. I then used white thinset mortar and set 3x6 tumbled travertine in a herring bone pattern using a 3/16" v notch trowel. Grouted the top of the tile and caulked with color matching latex caulk where the tile meets the wood frame.

This is a super easy build, but it cost us WAY more than the estimate. By the time we painted and hung it the total was closer to $150. 

We we squeezed the swing into the crack between the pillar and wall of my back porch. It barely fit, but we are a family of six so I wanted it to be as big as possible. 

An expansion of the 2x4 potting bench.

So I built this table in the last few weeks. I am looking to make furniture for a living at some point down the road, being sort of tired of my current profession. Starting a new hobby takes some initial investment, but my wife was enthusiatic. The whole table took about 4 days of work. I ran into a few problems with sizing of some of the pieces but they are all covered in the commments sections.

Materials: Fir for the legs, red oak and walnut on top. You may notice the top is pieced together a little differently than Ana's plan. This is due to some creative problem solving. Namely, the 1X6s for the top weren't quite the right width.

Finish: Satin Polyurethane (4 coats) and Minwax Cherry Oil based Stain (1 coat). Note, the spray cans of polyurethane are a waste of money.

Entire project was 350 dollars. I Probably could have done it for 300 or less had I more experience. Now I need some chairs. Saw some cool ones here. http://wudfurniture.com/furniture/wud-chair/
Whaddya say Ana? Plans Please! :)

I saw this table on Anna's website from rogueengineer.com. The plans were simple to follow. I made it out of pine, 2×4s, and baltic birch ply.

Our Australian Shepard will no longer be digging the trash out all over the floor!  I did change the plans up a bit because I wanted a hangover off the sides as well as the front. And we used bead board instead of the solid panel. Thanks for the great plans Ana!

My husband's grandfather helped us build this bed in his shop. We built it in about 5 hours and I stained and sealed it over the next few evenings. This was one of the most affordable and simple plans I came across to customize for my new chemical-free mattress. It is extremely sturdy and supportive. I really like the blog post Crab and Fish did on the brag for the Hailey Platform they built. You will find it helpful if you are interested in building this bed.

This was my first ever project. The table that has a white base is another table I built after the stained one.

The project took several weeks because I only was able to work on it on Saturday mornings. I'm happy with how it turned out and learned a lot from it! I have a new love for woodworking and enjoy the whole process, from design, to completion.

Thanks for checkling it out!

DIY Adirondack Chair

I thought I'd start building again with some decor that didn't need to be perfect. I needed something to spruce up my garage, something my son couldn't break while shooting baskets - this seemed perfect! I didn't have all of the scraps I needed so I did have to buy a few boards, but my friend wants me to make her one now and she'll supply the pallet. Since I planned to use it outside and wanted it to look weathered, I used semi-transparent deck stain, watered-down flat white paint and hit it with a sanding block, hammer, rasp, bottle caps - anything to scratch it up a bit. Then covered it with satin polycrylic (because that's what I had around the house).

My daughter and I made this for a Father's Day gift, along with a bike rack, to get my husband's bike "shop" in better order.

Made this storage bed but altered it some.  Still a queen size bed, changed the depth of the side boxes to accomate a suitcase so we could get luggage out of the way.  Built this for our cabin in Maine.

Waste tilt out, wine fridge, and storage shelf.

We were looking for a bunk bed system with stairs instead of a ladder. We had previously used a bunk bed on our vacation and our daughter was having trouble going down, she kept missing the ladder rungs. We searched online for beds with stairs but they were all too expensive. Then my husband found this site and we both looked through all the different plans. There are so many great plans for little girls beds, but in the end we decided with this one. It was the easiest for us to alter by adding the bottom bunk. We also liked this bed because we thought it the safest for our youngest who would be trying to climb. This is our first ever project built. We had tons of fun building this together and then letting our 4 yr old help us with the painting. We basically started with nothing in building this bed. We bought all the stuff except for the saw, sander and drill, which we borrowed. To add the bottom bunk, we made the distance at the bottom 6 inches, and then followed the pattern of separation for the railings that was used for the top. But it was only the bottom 2x6 and one round of the 2x4s for the railing. Since it was the bottom it didn't need to go as high as the top, just enough so our youngest won't roll in between the mattress and wall.

We had a 28 inch nook in the mud room/bathroom that was the collect all for our shoes, hats, boots, scarves, and pup accessories. Had seen shoe cabinets at ikea but with the space being small it needed a "custom" build. Ana had the perfect solution!! We took basic plan and reduced length to 28 inches and top width to 12 inches. I wanted a larger top surface to place baskets. We took the 2 drawer and added a 3rd for increased storage space. Drawers were also made deeper to fit with the wider top piece. Also added a 4 thick chunky legs (4x4) to help support and stabilize dresser. Those were set in a bit to accommodate the molding along baseboard. Added faux drawer fronts using 1/4 inch ply wood. We put the magnets on but made drawers hard to open so we kept magnet but removed the plate. An old leather belt was recycled for the back strips to prevent drawers from flopping down.