Community Brag Posts

From watching Olympic gymnast Simone Biles on the television to running, flipping and twirling all around our living room — my girls LOVE everything gymnastics. Both girls began competing with a local gymnastics club. Now that my oldest has moved up and is pretty serious about practicing her beam handstands and dismounts, she begged me to build a raised balance beam with suede covering so it would have a similar feel to her beam at the gym.

If you can relate to this, or even if you have a new gymnast (like my youngest in the pic above) wanting to improve their skills at home, then this comprehensive tutorial on how to build a raised balance beam is for you.

Full plans available on my blog The Creative 'Carr'penter. You can also find and pin this tutorial on Pinterest here.

Ana White inspired Rustic X Coffee Table finished with dark walnut stain and Annie Sloan graphite chalk paint.

Built by Kelly Flood Gugliemoni, shared on Facebook.

Sliding barn door hardware is DIY, cabinets are DIY - tutorials linked below.

Helped a friend build this one - plans were great! See blog post for more info.

Just wanted to do something a little more original.

Built this bed for my 5 year old for Christmas. I planned on doing it alone but luckily my husband helped because it was much easier to put everything together with 2 people. I definitely recommend the Kreg Jig if you are going to be building this bed. The lumber for the bed was $190 with a 10% military discount at Blue then about another $100 for paint, primer, sand paper, screws, and hinges for the stairs. You could probably do it for less but we sprung for the expensive self tapping screws and I got a gallon of primer and a gallon of each paint color. It took me about a month to finish the bed working but between my twin 1 year olds, my husbands schedule, and making sure I wasn't to loud in the garage (we have a duplex and the garage is right by the neighbors room) I could only work about an hour a night.

Wife wanted me to throw out all the scrap wood I had lying around. Instead I made some killer barstools. Fun look.

We ended up going with 4 2x12's for the table top and used 2x6's for the bread boards.

This was our first woodworking project. I was not that hard to put together.

I made a couple of changes to the design. I used 4x4 for the legs. I also change up the board that were used ontop. I have a step by step on my blog.

The almost the same as the table. Check out the changes and the cut list here: http://www.domesticated-engineer.com/1/post/2012/05/bench-for-farmhouse…

I wanted my top to be a lift top, so I used 1x3's adding breadboard ends. I ordered the lifts from Amazon. I applied a single coat of stain and then sanded it down to give it a more rustic look before applying a satin poly coat.

A. Henry

We just finished building this room and decided to finish it off with Ana's loft bed. It's mounted at height of 6 feet in order to accommodate our 18 year old.

Hanging bed for my daughter built from the "Easiest Hanging Daybed Plans". Super easy to do and looks and feels great!

I work for a large manufacturing company that frequently has 'desirable trash'. Found 3 beautiful, heavy-duty pallets with beautiful wood on them. Took them home, took them apart, and got to work. The wife had been wanting a swing out near our children's playset so she could sit and watch them. Used Kreg pocket holes for everything that I could so as to hide as much hardware as possible.

*Side note regarding why I did the rope the way I did - the original post had mentions of it being a bit tipsy (particularly with little ones!). With this design, there's no flip front or back and the rope only gets tighter the more weight that is applied.

This was my first finished project using plans from Ana's site, and I am very pleased with the finished product. Every aspect of the finished sideboard is based on something from the site. I started with the plans for the Planked Wood Sideboard, and made no modifications as the dimensions were perfect for our basement family room. I decided to inset the back (http://www.friendly-home.net/2012/02/gigantic-rustic-sideboard.html) as Ana explained that Hillary had done, and love the final result. This will allow us to use this to potentially divide a room in an open concept space at some point in the future.

For the finishing process, I decided to follow the "Rustic Yet Refined" finish tutorial highlighted on both the Ana-White site (http://ana-white.com/2013/08/rustic-yet-refined-wood-finish) and Jen Woodhouse House of Wood (http://jenwoodhouse.com/blog/2013/06/07/diy-dining-table/). I fully intended to complete the 9 step process, but found that after we applied the Minwax pre-stain wood conditioner, followed by Minwax special walnut stain and wiped it off within 15-30 seconds, the finish mirrored the restoration hardware finish that we were going for. We decided not to proceed with layering on the weathered oak or applying the whitewash, and went straight to the spar urethane satin coats.

Overall, the project was a success, but was difficult to finish during the Minnesota winter as it was unbelievably cold and was forced to complete the finishing process in our basement/laundry room, which extended the length of the project. I am very excited to begin building other pieces from Ana's plans.