Community Brag Posts

After my wife pinned the triple pedestal table, I took a look at the plans and redid them for a double pedestal table 78"x40". This is the first wood project that I have done in close to 12 years, it was good to get back to wood and I look forward to builing some more.

This 7 ft fancy x farmhouse table was built as an anniversary gift for some close friends, so they'd have a dining table large enough for their blended family.

Modifications to original plans

I shortened the top to 84" long, widened the top to 40"wide, and the (outside edge to outside edge) of the legs / supports to 60". This left plenty of room for a chair on each end. The diagonal support brace cuts were not modified.

Instead of pine, I used kiln-dried Douglas fir 2x4s for legs / supports. My local lumberyard sells in 8 ft pieces for well under $10 each. I rifled through the racks to find a bunch of straight, virtually knot free (ie clear) ones.

For the top, I sourced Clear Mixed Grain (CMG) Douglas Fir. Four 10 ft 2x12s were over $250 delivered. Not cheap! But they were straight and flat. No messing around with racked or warped big box stuff this time!

I ripped them down to 10" wide with a good table saw, rip fence, and fresh 60 tooth blade. I did not cut to 7 ft length immediately. Rather, I cut down to a few inches over that (more on that in a moment). I used the Kreg jig to drill pocket hole screws underneath, but I used Titebond III wood glue and pipe clamps / 5' galvanized pipes (6 of them, in alternating directions) to clamp the top together. I added 2" coarse thread blue-coated pocket hole screws the next day - really more for peace of mind.

To cut down to 84" length, I marked the lines with a straightedge & carpenter's pencil. I then used my circular saw (also with a fresh 60 tooth high quality blade) and a straight edge clamped to the wood as a guide. This gives you nice smooth end cuts without the worry of lining everything up perfectly during glue-up. Warning - you can splinter the ends if you aren't careful.

Sanding

I used a cheap Harbor Freight belt sander with 80 and 120 grit (be careful if you've never used a belt sander before, especially with coarse grits!) to even out the top and bottom. It didn't take much, luckily. (I bought a planer *after* completing this piece).

All cuts were sanded 60, 80, 100, 150, 220, 320 and 400 grit. Lesson learned: in the future its okay to stop at 220 or so. Sanding was done with a basic Dewalt quarter-sheet sander, with a 3m rubber hand sanding block, and plain ole-sandpaper in my hand. I shaped all edges by hand with 100/150/220.

Nails & Glue

I used a pneumatic nailer and Titebond III wood glue on the legs and supports, then a nail punch and wood filler to hide any nail holes. The aprons / stretchers were fastened with pocket hole screws and glue. I used plugs on the lower one, as it is more visible. The plugs are pretty much seamless - use glue and wood filler and sand out, nobody will ever be able to tell :)

A Quick Word on Wood Glue Selection

Many of the project plans on this site (and brag posts) mention the use of expanding glues like Gorilla Wood Glue, Elmer's Carpenter's Glue etc. These long open-time adhesives are easy to work with but they expand and are not as strong as Titebond.

Stain & Poly

I used a clean rag (cut up an old t shirt..) to apply a generous coat of Minwax wood conditioner, wiping off any excess after about 15 min. I then immediately applied a coat of Minwax Dark Walnut stain. I used stain applicator pads but a good rag works just fine and wiped off excess after 10 or 15 minutes.

The top received 2 coats, the second coat applied a week later.

2 coats of Minwax fast dry polyurethane were applied via brush (high quality natural bristle brush). I lightly sanded with 220 after the 1st coat was fully dried, and with 320 after the second. Semi gloss was used for the 3rd and final coat. If I had a 'do over', I would have used wipe on poly and thinned with mineral spirits to eliminate brush marks more effectively. OR I would have used a foam roller (still thinning a coat or two with mineral spirits).

Important: I applied a single coat of poly to the underside of the table as well. Coating the entire piece stabilizes the wood, according to a few articles. This means its less likely to shrink or swell unevenly over time.

Attaching the Top

In Ana's / Shanty 2 Chic's original plans, there are comments from people wondering how to attach the table top to the supports. Originally, I planned on drilling through the sandwiched 2x4 supports and deeply counterinking screws. You can buy a surprisingly decent countersink drill bit set at Harbor Freight for very little money. You could also use something like 3M velcro tape. Either way, you would be able to separate the top from the legs for transport. If you do use Titebond III to glue it down, I'm confident it will never come off.

This is my first brag post and only my 4th completed DIY furniture project, so please LMK if I've forgotten to cover any important details.

Dan Gendreau
S Kingstown, RI

Fun weekend project! I had never tried pocket hole joins before. The Kreg jig worked out great. Looking forward to trying a bigger coffee table in this same style. Thanks for the plans!

We needed somewhere to store shoes and sit while changing shoes, so I built this based on the flip top storage bench plans at http://ana-white.com/2012/10/plans/flip-top-storage-bench-new-plans

Total length of the project was 6 feet, so I added a 1x3 support at the middle. I made the storage top deeper so that it would hold adult shoes by using 1x6s instead of 1x4s.

I made the top into two "doors" so that they would be smaller and easier for our children to handle. I also rounded off the front edge with my router to make it easier on bottoms and shins.

My son was in a pirate mood and needed a ship to help sail the high seas.  So I built him one.  I added maps, used magnetic paint for the waves so that we could put fish magnets on them, and then a wheel from a playhouse kit from Home Depot.  

Dog crate / end table built from the plans on your site. Customer chose Early American Miniwax finish. This was a fun build. Thank you! -j.

This was a great project to get back into woodworking after many years of not building anything. Used my table saw for cutting the 30 degree miters. Plans didn't call for it, but I made dado joints for the shelves using a router. This made the bookcase very solid. For the miters I cut them first and then measured and cut the piece to the finished length. I cut the vertical shelf supports after the shelves were in which insured they were the exact length. A great suggestion is to use The Hillman Group "Procrafter" #8 x 2-in Yellow Zinc Square-Drive Wood Screws. The #2 square drive never slipped out and the screws were self drilling and countersunk themselves. No need to predrill a countersink hole or anything else. Added the chimney after seeing it on another brag post. This cute little item brought a big smile to my granddaughter's face on Christmas morning. The time investment of 10 hours for me was due to rusty woodworking skills and needing time to think about things. Could probably build the next one in five hours. Painting took as long as the building.

My wife wanted something to fill up a large wall in our kitchen so I designed a collage centered over a buffet table. I used the plans from the Salsa Console that I found on this website for the table. I had to modify the plans quite a bit in order for the table to fit the space that we had. After I had the design the way I wanted it, my wife and I found the frames that we needed and painted them with a black, brown,  and terquoise theme. I built the hutch using pine that I bought from the hardware store. I used quarter round moulding strips to accentuate the drawer faces and the cabinet doors. I added glass to the center of the cabinet doors and then backed the glass with the material from one of those cheap ceiling light panels to give the glass a 3D frosted appearance. I then painted the interior of the cabinets with that same terquoise color and ran lights inside the cabinets so that the terquiose color would show through the forsted glass. I finished the table off by staining it with a dark red maple stain (to match our kitchen table and island) and then added a few simple drawer/cabinet knobs. Everything came together nicely when we hung it all up over the table. Now all we have left to do is add our pictures to the frames.

Very easy and fun project. Thank you so much for the inspiration and plan.

We used the basics of the plan as presented but added scroll-cut names and small clipart designs on the backs. He also routed a curved edge along the sides and fronts of the seats for a little smoother look.

For the lettering, I printed out the names on the computer, then applied them to the wood with adhesive for cutting. The font I used is called Epistolar. I had to find one that didn't look funny with the A since there would not be a way to keep the little triangle part at the top. Epistolar was the only font I had on my computer that would work for that. We simply drilled a hole midway below the peak of the A to make it look right. The font itself does not have any cross piece on the A.

For the small Jeep and Rocking Horse, I just looked online for a silhouette of a car and a horse. The rocking horse again presented a slight challenge since if we cut the rocker as it was shown, the horses legs would look funky. We solved that by cutting the rocker part slightly smaller and leaving some space between it and the horses legs.

A few things we learned: Be sure your letters aren't too close together or the wood will split when you are sanding. We had this problem with some of the A's before we drilled the hole smaller. We used a drill press, for the holes, and the board underneath was not fresh so some of the back pieces splintered. A fresh board under the holes would have kept that from happening.

A modified smaller version of the dumpster dresser.

Barn door slider with all 3 shelfs stained dark walnut with a white cabinet 

Just need to stain it.

I'm pretty impressed with myself, thanks for the plans!

For our 5th (Wood) Anniversary I built this A-Frame Wine Rack out of Eastern Red Cedar and Birch. I found the plans on an Australian Websiite so had to convert metric to sae (hardest part of the entire project). It was easy to do and took two days with drying time. If you would like the plans let me know.

Thanks for looking!

Found this plan and loved the look. Decided to go for it. I bought all the wood on a Saturday afternoon and started cutting it out on Sunday morning. I was able to get everything done with the exception of stain and poly in 1 day. The longest part was waiting for the polyurethane to dry completely before bringing it inside. Due to the size of this bed, it is best to bring it inside in multiple pieces and complete the final assembly in the room.

This is a fun project and made a great gift for my mom for Christmas last year. Inexpensive and didn't take long to complete. The pull is from Anthropologie (they have some of the cutest pulls!). Thanks Ana!