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Love the easy to follow plans!!! Make sure you have room when building....this a Big bench.

Rob V.  

I built this for my son's bedroom, but modified it to fit our needs. It is 42" high, 38" wide, and 18" deep. I did a double thick top, which I love, and my Dad routed it for me. This piece is solid! I am very happy with the result! Sorry for the not so great cell phone pics!

Well, as my first project off of ana-white.com, I decided to make my two little guys the Little Helper Tower. I had seen store versions that cost $200 or more, so was excited to be able to have something that we wouldn't normally be able to buy.

It was supposed to be a Christmas present. It was finally painted and ready to go by mid-March. Which is to say, I couldn't find time to work on it too much, though it also took me much longer to do than what Ana said, which is not unusual for me.

The main problems I faced were 1x2s that I bought wet and that warped by the time I got around to using them; not having an honestly flat surface to work on, not having lots of experience with my jigsaw, so my top arches and bottom curves are not that attractive, and using some leftover red paint that took about 3 layers, plus the primer, to cover well.

In the end, I have a working helping tower with a movable floor that both my kids, now 2 and 4, can use in the kitchen (mainly - we didn't make the folding kind because the hinges were way too expensive!, so it doesn't move around too much) and it has helped my little guys help me on endless baking projects. My 2-year-old still can't get out of it himself, but my 4-year-old swings on it like a monkey. Thanks, Ana, for all your inspiration! I have a list a mile long of projects I want to tackle. Hopefully I'll get to one soon!

I recently started collecting vinyl records and wanted to show some of them off but also have them readily available to play.  I saw some options online but decided to make some shelves myself.  No judging my music!  :)

More details and instructions on my blog:

http://www.woodworkingfourdummies.com/blog/diy-record-display-shelf

Made this corner cupboard in an afternoon. It was easier than expected especially with the sliding compound miter saw, and the kreg jig haha!

After building a custom sized farmhouse table by combining and tweaking the two plans here, we knew we wanted another piece of dining furniture as substantial as the table and in the same style. The farmhouse bench was the logical choice!

After calculating our desired height and length (our table is taller, but not a long as Ana's) we jumped right into building. Other than waiting for the glue to set and the stain to dry the building itself took less than two hours.

Before we stained the table we distressed the wood by tossing a bag of screws, nails & miscellaneous cabinet hardware against the bench top, followed by random scatterings of hammer blows and a few fuax-nail punch holes to make it seem more time-worn and aged (we used the same process on our table before finishing it). The key was to not go over-board and keep it random to make it seem as if the marks had been acquired over many years.

We love how both pieces turned out, from the cost to the look to the peace of mind knowing that it won't break our hearts to see the furniture get a little scratched or banged here & there as well as the substance given by having a solid wood dining set. This is one bench that won't flip over willy nilly. :)

King Storage Bed with a built in bookcase as a headboard. Tons of storage space and turned out great especially at night.

my second Projects))))

My husband and I enjoyed building this for our boys. Our wood supply store didn't have enough 1x4's so we purchased 1x6's and ripped them down to an even 4" instead of 3.5 as with a 1x4. We also increased the height by 5.5 inches. That gives us a little extra room to do nightly reading at the bottom bunk. The slats (2 sets) in the bottom are just from IKEA and at the time we just threw them down there and I forgot to set them up in place for a true final photo. Oh well. They've enjoyed the bed for over a month already 

Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Thank you, Joanne, for designing this fun to build trunk. It enabled me to use pieces of odd scrap wood and a weathered old belt and make something fun and functional of them!

We found the plans for the Classic Bunk Bed look and we loved it.  Since our boys share a room this bunk bed design was the perfect match for us.  We used Red Mahogany stain with a polyurethane clear coat to give it a good shine.  I made a little revision to the slats but adding a 1X6 crossbea, across the bottom and top bunk to give added support for the boys as they get older but other than that the beds are directly from the plans.  Now onto the same design for our girls!

I have to shorten the design up a bit to fit my dinning room. I also did Epoxy Resin on top to give it the glass like appearance.

So ebony stain on white pedistole with an Epoxy Resin finish.

Entryway locker cubbies, top portion constructed in custom width and shelf height. Two sets.

Chevron kids table

We had a great time building this
We did the bottom half one weekday, and the top piece another day. Primer, painting, and sanding in all took us 6 days.
It look fantastic

Used the farm house bed plans from here with a few modifications.  Instead of plywood for the headboard and footboard, I used tongue and grove 1x6 planks.  I used edge glued spruce planks from Lowes for the drawer fronts and I invested a bit more on the drawer slides and opted for the full opening type.  Also, rather than 3 large drawers on either side, I opted to put 2 smaller drawers in the center.  I felt the shallower drawers would be more useful for smaller items (socks and underwear).  I also used a 3/4" molding to hid the ends of the plywood drawer boxes.  The weathered finish was created using a video I found on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7Via9Lz4Pw).  My upgrades increased the overall price, but it was still under $600 and should last a lifetime.