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 works perfectly for our really tiny, narrow bathroom. I finished it with some stain we already had on hand. Thank you so much for the building plans!

We've been talking about making this for quite some time now, probably close to 6 months. Mostly because we've never made anything before we kept putting it off. We had a free weekend and decided that we needed to complete this project that's been hanging out there for way too long. We'd researched where to get the wood, and what we wanted, but still did a little more planning. Thursday night we went to the big orange box and checked out their options for 2x4s, plywood and moulding. Friday I went to our local Ace lumber yard and looked at their options.

Friday night we decided to get the 2x4's and plywood from Home... the big orange box since their plywood was much more level. We paid a little more for the grade A plywood, but didn't want MDF as it will disintegrate when it gets wet. Not planning on getting things wet, but just want to be sure.

We got the moulding at the local supply store along with screws by the pound and corner brackets.

As you can see in one of the photos, we had the store cut the plywood for us as we didn't have access to a table saw. We borrowed and used a compound mitre chop saw for the rest of the cuts. Since we had so much leftover plywood and really liked the look of Sausha's wider pillars, we decided to go with facing out the front and left side (the only ones visible in our location) and columns and put moulding on the front and one back leg showing. For the moulding we only faced the back and right leg with two pieces. In hind sight as the pedestal doesn't go against the wall we could have gone all the way around, but that might have added another weekend.

Saturday we started out getting the rest of the necessary wood, laying out the boards and deciding how we wanted to proceed. We ended up following the directions and not making any changes to it. The only change I thought about making was to take the 2x4's all the way to the ground rather than mount them on the bottom decking. We decided since this has been made quite a few times and haven't seen any bad reports, we'd stick to the plan.

Saturday we worked about 9 hours total putting everything together, facing out the project and filling the screw holes with wood putty. My only regret at this point is that I didn't fill the top edge of the faced plywood all the way across with putty. In order to get a much cleaner look, if I were to do it again I'd have bought a tub of wood putty and filled the entire edge to eliminate any holes or spaces from the edge of the plywood and the seam between the face and decking.

Sunday we started out by sanding the wood putty down, reapplying where needed, sanding the rest of the rough edges flat, and then started on moulding. The moulding took a better part of the day to get the angles right, and thankfully we had the compound chop saw that would do greater than 45 degree angles. We glued and nailed the moulding down, and then took the project into the garage to paint as it was getting late on Sunday. Three coats of paint smoothed out all the edges. Be careful about drips on the corners. We decided to go with something other than 1)trying to match the washer/dryer and 2) black as it might attract too much lint and show. In the pictures it's actually a lot more purple than in real life, but it's a gray paint with a tint of color to it, Behr premium primer and paint in one.

We put the stand in place Monday evening, although the paint was still slightly tacky. The hardest part about the end was getting the washer and dryer up and hooked up. We needed to put the washer up first and connect it as the hookups were behind the dryer and no way we could have connected it with the dryer in place.

We love it! It's raised the washer and dryer up to a decent level, saved us at least $350, and now have room to put baskets underneath. The whole thing rattles quite a bit when the washer spins up, but so does the house and the TV stand 2 rooms away...

Due to a few bad cuts, we ended up having to get an additional strip of moulding. If you're not experienced in doing moulding, plan on a LOT of waste. ;)

Our next project needs to be a matching recycling center which will go right next to this.

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....

Built 2 twin beds for my granddaughters.  They turned out great and they love them!  

Our cottage bedroom doesn't have a closet. This is the perfect solution. We hung curtains over the front also to look more finished.
 

These are the first pieces of furniture I have ever built. The first bed was a project for my daughter and me only, but we let the guys help on the second bed. I copied the finish described by the blog. Everyone was real doubtful that it would work, but it turned out great. My sons love their new beds!

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

Easy plans to follow and my wife loves the results! Will be used as a book shelf for home schooling our 3 kids. 

Bedroom media center. Tv and fireplace with shelves.

We finished the deck this summer and wanted a large table to put on it. I saw the different versions of the outdoor Ana built. This one seats eight and has a tile inlay. For now...chairs from Walmart provide seating.

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.

We did make some revisions to the plans, including making it shorter and not as wide. 

I am in process of making these for my new twin nephews. By reducing the width of the toy box by 1/2", I was able to fit two of the open top toy boxes on one sheet of cabinet grade plywood ($30).

For Two Toy Boxes cut plywood to the following dimensions (see photo for layout):

2 - 32 x 15 1/2 pieces (bottoms)
4 - 33 1/2 x 15 1/2 (front and back)
4 - 15 1/2 x 15 1/2 (sides)

My local Home Depot does not charge for cutting the plywood and the person that was assisting me made absolutely perfect cuts and helped direct me to the cabinet grade plywood (which was located away from the plywood aisle), thus saving me an extra $15.

Boxes took approximately 2-3 hours each to build, another hour to sand and fill screw holes, and several hours to paint.

Photo is of Dexter's toy box. Dante's looks very similar. My 2 year old niece enjoyed taking a nap inside of the boxes as well.

Make sure to purchase non-toxic paint.... I believe one of my nephews may be part beaver!

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.

Made this over the weekend with my Daughter. Gray oil based stain. 

This was my first woodworking project and I absolutely love it. I think it turned out amazing and was actually very simple to do. I just got some construction grade lumber from Home Depot and borrowed some tools and got started. I did have to buy a Kreg Jig, which is an amazing tool by the way. I am not complaining about having to buy it since I have used it on many projects since!