Community Brag Posts

I love Ana's original design and it was a great inspiration. I needed to add more baskets so I adjusted it a little. I had some drawer slides sitting around so I added a pull out shelf to fold on as well.

I had a lot of fun making this. I am so excited to be using it. Ana's plans were easy to follow.

This was my first woodworking project since high school. Initial build I messed up the legs and almost gave up, but recut, got some other wood and got through it all pretty nice. I added an edge with my router I got when I was almost complete with this piece. Added bought molding around the top and used a stain I got from a local woodworking store. My wife loves. I still need to get some felt for the drawer, but I brought it in this week from my shop.

I chose to add an extra plank on the top to have it extend out  a couple of inches on the front.  This was my second furniture build and I'm still learning.  This didn't take me very long and I was able to do it on the sly to surprise my husband.  First project from Ana White and won't be my last.

Built these for my daughters for Christmas. They are super easy and fun to make!

We built this for our entry way to store hats, gloves, and other goodies.  I modifed the depth to be narrower to leave more walking space.  We live in a three level townhouse and any space much less storage space is premium.  I liked the idea of the long pull out drawer in one of the earlier postings as well as the basket idea so we included both into our design.  I also used conventional drawer slides instead of the center mount.  We havent decided on the finish or the drawer pull hardware yet but I love the look of natural wood so i wanted to post it without a finish.

The box is pretty similar to Mimi's bench with a few dimensions changed. I also fully framed out the inside to make sure adults could sit on it if need be. The arms and backrest took a lot of just staring and "pondering". I like it and everyone else seems to love it. Thanks Ana and Mimi. 

I built a couple benches to go with the reclaimed wood farm table I recently built. They are made out of hard to find 2″ reclaimed rough sawn lumber. The benches would also make a great coffee table or side table. Each bench is 36″ long and 18″ tall and 9″ deep.

This dollhouse was super easy to make! Harper (the doll) wanted an open concept living/kitchen, and that is the first floor. Second floor are the bedroom and bathroom. Top floor is the closet. The roof is made from 3.5" slats of luan glued together and painted with black sanded paint. Notice the baseboards and crown molding? My granddaughter helped cut windows out with a jig saw. I still owe my granddaughter a garage and patio with pergola, and kitchen appliances and chairs, but that will wait until summer when she can help craft/build them. 

Harper's bed is modeled after the farmhouse bed plans available on this site, but I used smaller scrap lumber. I wanted milk paint but was unwilling to pay the high price, so I bought a sample jar of antique ivory paint and watered it down. It turned out great!

I built this for a friend who needed a small side table. All the cuts were made with a chop saw. I used 1X3 furring strips and 2X2's. It was a little tricky to get all the table slats to match up. I used the Kreg jig to conceal all the screws and get stronger joints. I love that thing!

This has been our largest project yet!  We build this table over the course of several months.  Just working on it here and there when we were in the mood or had the chance.  You can check out my blog for more details and pictures of the project.

Hope you like it! We used Duck Egg Chalk Paint and a dark walnut stain for the top and legs. We also put in drawer slides instead of doing it the normal way the plans said. (That was harder than we expected but the pay off is well worth it.) Knobs are from Hobby Lobby and we wrapped them in twine to brighten them up!

Ethan and I did a little project last week.

It’s been windy and cold outside and we’ve been running out of indoor activities. We made Valentine decor, heart-shaped food, colored, met friends at museums and toddler-rock’n-roll-playing coffee joints, played trains and kitchen and dinosaurs, read a hundred books.

One super fun source of indoor entertainment we’ve never successfully completed is building a fort.

When I was young, I was the fort-making queen. My parents had this incredible 80′s-style glass-and-metal table with huge leather and wood chairs (it was insane), each piece weighing what seemed like a million pounds—PERFECT fort building materials. Blankets, pillows, books, and toys made a wonderland of imagination for me and my friends. I remember supporting corners of blankets with this heavy old clay jug and other skull-crushing items that could have crashed down at any wrong movement. How we make it through childhood is beyond me.

I guess our furniture selection is just not fort-worthy. At least, not in the sense that doesn’t pose the risk of a chair toppling on him, undoubtedly leading to suffocation and/or a concussion.

So a few minutes spent reading Ana White’s website, a little trip to the hardware store (where a visit to the “big saw” was requested only to end in wimpers of “no saw, I’m scared!”), about $25, and a little sweat later, we had a perfect little “fort” with no chance of injury, one that doesn’t need to be disassembled…ever.

We had everything cut down at the hardware store. Paint was leftover from Ethan’s train board, side panels made from Target tab-top curtains I’ve had since college. Really.

It was Ethan’s first construction project so I started him off right—with sanding.

When everything was nice and smooth, we had lunch and the Peanut hit the hay while I took out the “big mama bit collection” and started drilling. As usual, Ana’s plans were very well illustrated and straightforward…we used her oven door plan for Ethan’s kitchen and it worked perfectly.

By the time Little Man woke, we were ready for paint. I wondered if painting with a toddler was the smartest idea…but we just went for it.

He did GREAT. Thank you Ikea for the $2 smock.

As I’d feared, the (almost) finished product was about four feet too tall. It was massive in our living room!

So a few days later the Hubs helped me cut it down with our chop saw. So much for making things easy by having all the wood pre-cut. I guess Ana’s house is much bigger than ours.

My next task was hemming, narrowing, and velcro-izing the panels. With a much shorter tent, my trusty old curtains were way too long. Plus, I wasn’t so sure about Ana’s suggestion to staple curtain to tent…it seemed much too permanent What if we want to add a stamped pattern? Or a window? Or change up the fabric? Velcro seemed safer.

Sure, it’s not the fastest way, but I think it was worth the time. And my $20 craigslist sewing machine handled it like a champ.

We’ve already done some good lazin’ around in the new fort. Or nook. Or tent. Whatever, Ethan seems to think it is pretty cool.

It’s also pretty popular with our furry friends.

In my country there aren't  Kreg jigs; i.e. no Kreg jig, no pocket holes. I obtained a Kreg Jig mini and this is my first build (really, I made four of them)

using the gaby kitchen island plan from ana white I built this over 2 weekends, taking my time! We needed a new, larger side wall island for our laptops, phones, junk, etc and we couldnt love it more. The martha stewart drawer pulls add a nice touch and it all came together quite nicely for our purposes. Thanks so much for taking your time to post such great plans!