Community Brag Posts

I have to admit...I'm an Ana White and Pintrest addict. I was visiting my cousins farm and saw a pile of beautiful old & weathered barn wood. She let me take a big pile home. I washed and scrubbed the wood with a soft brush to get the years of dirt off. After dried, I layed down all the wood and picked out all the neat character pieces. I freehanded a template of the headboard on butcher paper and traced it on the boards. I cut the boards and lightly sanded the edges. I brushed on two coats of clear coat. When dried my hunky hubby helped me put it all together with 1x2"s and screws. We attached it to the bed frame and there ya have it! A gorgeous traditional-rustic headboard!

I am a really beginning builder (read: this is about my fifth project ever), but it is perfect for our tiny, narrow bathroom. I finished it with Golden Oak stain I already had on hand, and I enjoyed the process. Thanks so much for sharing the plans!

I absolutely loved this table but needed to modify it to fit into a specific area of my house, so I put two drawers on top of each other instead of having all four across. I also shortened the legs as a result. I really love the way it turned out. It is so pretty.

The only thing I dislike is the drawers. They are incredibly heavy, don't slide that well (not because of any mistake on my part, just because they are wood sliders and not metal or plastic), and the shape and size don't make them very usable. They're sort of awkward. I originally wanted it to be a place for my boys to store their Thomas train tracks and Legos, but there's really no way a kid can use drawers that heavy and deep. So that's a bummer.

But overall it's a really nice addition to that part of our living room!

This is my third project - built the Full Farmhouse bed and Haley platform bed. Son wanted a 6 ft table to accommodate all of his computer/gaming devices.

Came together quickly - sanding/stain/finish took majority of time. Stained base with Minwax ebony (2 coats), used Minwax weathered Oak on table top (1 coat) and 3 coats of Satin Polycrylic.

I now have a long list of projects....

My first project.

The wire shelves that the builder placed were not cutting it for storage. This setup from your plan helped garner so much more space for organizing. The pantry is roughly 54”x 35” and we were able to place five shelves instead of the four. Thank you so much for your assistance!

I built this in just a couple of hours. I thought it would look good in our living room. I also wanted to try the Gel stain and thought this would be a good project for that.

My first project from plans found on this site. Thanks!

Thanks for the great plan Ana! Super cute addition to our bathroom!

I really needed a kitchen island. That would work for me & last.
We, my husband & I, based our plan off of the Easy Kitchen Island Plans. I printed the plans. Then modified a few items. Originally I was gonna do a 4ftx25" but my butcher block we found was 6ft. So we left it with 6ft. My barstools slip under the overhang so kids can pull them out & use when needed but not be in the way.
We also made it custom to my height for mixing & kneading dough. The selves are different to work.with my tupperware containers. (Goal is to get all the same eventually).
We used cedar & a little pine for the main structure. The top is European walnut butcher block.
It's on wheels. So I can move it out of the way if needed.
We did seal the sides (kids & messy cook). The shelves & top I used butcher block oil & conditioner. Ever month I add a thin coat of conditioner to the top.
I love that I have so much room now to create.
Thank you so much for the inspiration!
Faith & Jonathan Flesher

It is almost back to school time (20 days) and I am home alone with my 4 kids while my husband is away on business for 2.5 weeks. What is a woman to do? Find a project.
There has always been this weird little nitch in the front "formal living room" that I use as my photo studio. It is only 55 1/4 " wide and 7" deep so nothing I could find would fit there- I usually have a coat rack there- and last year I had my boys' backpacks for school hung there. But... This year my twins are going off to school- which means 4 backpacks. Enter project! I modified the Small Locker Project (http://ana-white.com/2010/08/still-not-locker.html) and built the lockers to 1.) fit the space 2.)to fit their existing shoe baskets that used to be in an Ikea Expedit shelf.
I am soooo pleased with how they turned out.
I built this in pieces- first the bench, then the dividers and backing, and then the cubbies above. I built it using 1/2 in birch veneer plywood (that happens to be Purebond) from home depot. I had Home Depot cut the wood (which I normally do for the easiness factor- but this time it was a mistake. My favorite cutting guy was on vacation and I wanted to start now so I let Moose cut it. So not a good idea. One piece was 15" wide at one end and 15 1/4 " at the other... I gave him a cutting guide, hello?
Good thing I have my own table saw so I could fix it. (from when I built my girls beds: http://ana-white.com/2010/05/plans/corner-unit-twin-storage-bed)
I sanded and stained the wood with custom stain from Sherwin Williams. I then gave it 3 coats of waterbased Poly .(sanding between each one)
Then I glued and nailed it together (for the record, 1/2 plywood is harder to shoot nails into- just sayin')
Then I had the wood cut for the dividers and back (sand, stain, poly, glue and nail, install)
Finally the cubbies at the top: (sand stain, poly glue and nail, install)
After that I put on the trim so now I have a built in lockers for my kids- their backpacks and shoe baskets fit exactly, and there is room for when they grow for the backpack hooks to move up. I plan to use chalkboard vinyl to put their names above the hooks. Thanks Ana again for inspiring me!!!!!!

We were throwing all of our woodworking supplies into this closet off my patio, and it was really hard to find what we needed when we needed it.
So we made this shelf using two 2x4x10s cut to an inch less than 5ft each for the legs, and 4 1x3x8s cut to half inch less than 2ft each cut. (one board per shelf). (Measurements are for minimum waste)
Kreg jigged the 1x3s together 4 deep for each shelf. Used 1 1/4" Kreg screws.

We might go back and add a shelf or two to fix the odd spacing at the top and give us more shelves for the little things.

I liked the look of the spacers on the bottom shelf, but decided to leave them out since I just wanted to be done with this project :) I modified the plans to only have one shelf, as well as feet on the bottom (instead of having the piece go completely to the floor). As a result of adding the feet, the bottom is framed with 1x2s instead of 1x4s. I needed to purchase 6 1x2s to do that (but only needed 3 1x4s). I attempted to miter the cuts on those pieces...wood filler came to the rescue in the end. This was a lot of fun to make!

Super easy vase holder adds a fun element!

I used pine for the 2x6's and 2x4's (and 1x3's) and fir plywood for the headboard, footboard and drawers. I also modified the drawers and used a square piece of 3/4" plywood for the bottom - made it way easier to build the drawers square so they slide nicely!

The pulls are from Lee Valley.

This bench for 2 was made of leftover pine wood planks I had in my cellar. I used different saws and a router to make sure the ends where smooth and give the overall project a elegant touch. Since I love to see the texture of wood I chose a walnut stain.

I built this coat rack a couple of years ago for our house when our little girl ripped the one we had out of the wall trying to get her coat off the hook lol. I was actually able to reuse the hooks from the cheap little coat rack that we had bought from the home store. It attached into the wall using drywall anchors so it wasn’t all that secure to begin with. I set out to make one that would look a lot nicer and have some room for storage. The design I came up with works great for  storing all our coats and hats, but also the cubby storage at the top is great for storing keys and gloves and whatever else you may need to store.