Community Brag Posts

This is a great place to put on shoes and hang up your coat. My husband loves it. You can place your shoes on the shelf under the bench.

First time building furniture. This turned out much better than I thought. After this I probably could've build the farmhouse table myself instead of paying way too much for my wood dining table. Only if I have found Ana's site sooner. :)

Having a Kreg jig also made the whole process much easier.

We wanted to build a farm table with benches to accommodate a few more people in the same space. This plan was easy to use. We modified a couple of the supports to metal piping to change the look up. We also painted the table and used a stencil to create a old world feel to it. It was a very fun project!

I'm a furniture builder now! This is actually the fourth project built from Ana's plans, but the first one complete and gifted. I bought my materials in the morning, and had it together by late afternoon. Now choosing colors, trim and do-dads to embellish was a whole nuther thing. I opted for chalk paint with a wax finish, and distressed her. She has mirrors on both sides as well as two, double hooks for hats, belts and jewelry.

My grand daughter is one pleased princess. Me too! I'm proud of myself.

Thanks Ana for the terrific instructions, encouragement and education you provide.

We built this dog kennel as a donation to a fundraiser for our favorite dog rescue. It was auctioned off at the silent auction and all the money went to the dogs! :)

We used cheap furring strips for the majority of the project. We also had some leftover beadboard so we used that for the sides & back panel. We painted the base antique white and made a nice top out of some scrap lumber & old hardwood plywood. It took about an afternoon to assemble but another few days to sand and paint. We finished it while all 4 sides were separate to make it easier and it was still a pain to paint. This would be a great project to have a paint sprayer because it is sooo hard to avoid drips with this design.

The whole piece cost us almost nothing to make and we love how it turned out. We need to make ourselves one for our dogs!

The best part of this project was seeing it go home to someone who loves it and all the profits go to the Basset Hound Rescue!

Thanks Ana for the plans we couldn't have done it without you!

I found an old coffee table with stained legs for $10 on one of those app "for sale" sites. Sanded them down and with two pieces of 1 by 4 for the apron and 2 pieces of 1 by 6 for the top made this table. Apron is No2 whitewood and Top is select pine. Top was stained in a dark color (Varathane Kona) and then painted gray and sanded back to show some of grain and stain through. Total cost of new table about $60 (most expensive part was the select pine for the top at around $35)

We are going for a rustic look in our teen sons bedroom. He has some large books that will not fit onto his bookshelf so a pallet wall shelf seemed like a perfect solution.

This project literally took five minutes. If you don't have a sawsall it would probably take around 30 but still pretty quick.

Starting to get colder here in SC. I know the northerners will scoff at me but I'm a wuss when it comes to the cold... and I want my warm garage spot back. That means cleaning up my scrap wood and finishing the big projects that won't fit in my little project/craft room. So the past few weekends I have done a few scrap projects that had been on my mind for a while.

First was shelves for our oddly shaped walk-in-closet. Most of the wood was salvaged from my old dresser/armoir with a splash of scrap whitewood boards to finish it up. I love being able to see everything right when I walk in now.

Second is a simple tie rack for Mr. Lodise so he doesn't have to put them on a coat hanger any more. One more step to getting everything in the closet more visible.

Third is a holder for my hair dryer and straightening iron so they don't have to take up counter space anymore.

Best of all my car now fits in the garage again :)

Instructions for the Ridge Media Console Table were easy enough to understand after one read-through.

I changed up the front-drawer face to go along with other decor in room fun, satisfying project.

NOTE -- Measure your electronics. The drawer is supposed to hide all wires and electronics for a clean look, however, the plans give a 13" drawer space. The dvd/tuner I own is approx 14.5", therefore I have to store it on the bottom shelf. I guess it's time to upgrade to blu-ray.

I built this as a place where my husband can store his keys and wallet. This table has nice, clean lines. The simple angles fit with the many pieces of Asian décor that we have.

Followed the plans closely. Used a roman ogee bit to add a decorative edge to the top. Used strap style hinges instead as well.

How to build a simple laptop desk to use when working from the couch. This was a quick build. We added a small storage area for my blogging binder. 

My first Ana project- took the spa bench and added doors. Thanks for the easy-to-use plans, Ana. Still learning, though- I ended up buying three sets of hinges before I was happy!

My summer-long project (admittedly, I was lazy about getting it done) was to make built-in bookshelves for our huge family room. For the bookshelves themselves I cobbled together plans from different sites, and modified them all to fit our space/needs, and the cabinets are built after Ana's cabinet plans, modified to be as thin in depth as the bookshelves. Doors on the cabinets were a pain, but they are also my favorite part of the whole shebang with their beadboard inserts. Moulding at top and bottom finishes out the look, and caulking in all the gaps helps give it cohesion.
I could not be happier with my built-ins. I feel like I have a library now, and it got all of our books out of boxes and onto shelves. Yay!

This entire project cost around $80-$100 because I acquired quite a bit of free wood off Craigslist. I also got wood from the scrap bin at Home Depot for great discounts. Since this would've likely cost near 1k to buy, I am quite pleased.
Anytime you are making projects without real plans, it take quite a bit longer and more mistakes are made. But, to have something completely customized to your needs and space is better than any price tag/time you can put on it!

Tools used: drill, kreg mini pocket hole jig, orbital sander, countersink bit, miter saw, jig saw, HPLV paint sprayer, clamps, circular saw