Community Brag Posts

Our Australian Shepard will no longer be digging the trash out all over the floor!  I did change the plans up a bit because I wanted a hangover off the sides as well as the front. And we used bead board instead of the solid panel. Thanks for the great plans Ana!

I have 4 young Granddaughter's. They each got a chair from Grampa.

mtnmike

My mom has been addicted to Pinterest for a while now, so eventually she was led to this site. To make a long story short, she asked me to build her a dining room table similar to the Rustic Table design, but just a bit beefier, and with custom dimensions to fit the family's needs. I used 2x8's (8 feet long) for the table top, 2x4's for the apron/skirt, and 4x4's for the legs. This thing is a monster. I'm assuming it weighs close to 200 lbs. I beat the legs up with an old golf club, and scratched them up pretty good with screws.

This was my first time attempting something of this caliber, and I am really pleased with the results. The best part is that my mother LOVES it, and I now look like the greatest son in the world to all of her friends on Facebook!

I built these for my daughter's birthday, after she showed me a set of night stands that resembled these from the site. I used cedar with a steel wool and viniger stain to give them a aged look. With 4 coats of a water based urathane as a finish. Your plans were accurate and simple to follow. Thanks

This summer my wife and I remodeled our oldest's bedroom. I found this nightstand on Ana's website, and my wife fell in love with it. I had to make it! I noticed there were no brag posts for the Julia, so I felt that I had to contribute as a thank you for finding these plans. Thanks Ana!

I built these fun and easy tents for our playroom. They are perfect for reading, or for an indoor camping trip.

Made this storage bed but altered it some.  Still a queen size bed, changed the depth of the side boxes to accomate a suitcase so we could get luggage out of the way.  Built this for our cabin in Maine.

I needed a compact way to organize and store my running shoes. As you can see in the pictures above, the answer was relatively simple. My google search led me http://www.notmartha.org/tomake/shoerack/ . I simplified the idea using 1x2, 1x3, and 1x4 boards. You can see the simple shape these make holds the shoes by the toe. I used a 1x2 board for a spacer between the two levels. On a whim , I added another spacer board and topped it all off with another 1x4 which fit perfectly as a shelf.

Before I assembled the pieces, I predrilld holes across the 1x2 boards. When I installed them piece by piece, it was only a matter of leveling and installing drywall anchors.

Very excited to have finished my second build! My daughter was so excited about these shelves, too. She even helped pick up her play area so we could get a nice picture. I only have a small wagon, so all the big cuts were done at Home Depot. Best part of this project: with the cuts completed in-store, this project took about the same amount of time to put together as a similar IKEA shelf, only no Allen wrenches were involved.

2 wood pallets, 1 2x4 from an old wall teardown, and an old door we were going to pitch = 1 free workbench!

(used the extra pallet wood to make the decor sign. I wanted to make it girly. :) )

This was a perfect build for my brother's farmhouse style home. The build itself wasn't too difficult but getting to doors to slide properly was definitely challenging. We had originally spray painted the hardware oil rubbed bronze but found the it kept rubbing off when we slid the doors so we ended sanding everything back down to the original color.

We also bought multiple pulleys based on the tutorial we found but they really didn't work great. We finally found these 1.5 inch pulleys (http://store.riggingcentral.com/15-in-2-in-25-in-3-in-35-in-sheaves-p36…) and used (2) 5/16 bolt nuts inside the pulley to center the cleaves pins and secure. 

I followed the plan exactly except that I left out the stretcher. It turned out beautifully and fits our kitchen perfectly. I wanted to complete the building in a weekend, but even with a helpful husband the kids distracted me. It ended up taking me three weeks working during naptimes and after bedtime.
My recommendations:
-I used 2x4s for the legs, but if I had to do it over again, I'd just buy 4x4s and use those. I did my best to fill in the seams in the legs, but I still notice them from certain angles.
-Sand, sand, and sand again. I hate spending time sanding, but this is a project where it's totally worth it. I sanded everything really aggressively with 60 or 80 grit paper and after I filled in screw holes and cracks, sanded again with 120. Then I hand sanded with 220. I'm really glad I did.
-Don't cut the table top boards (2x6s) till you are ready to place them. You want to make sure you have a really tight fit here.
-Because I didn't want any cracks on the table top, I filled in the seams between the boards with Elmer's wood filler. I was really nervous about how it would stain, but I just was super careful to sand any excess wood filler off the boards before staining. The wood filler appears a bit darker than the wood, but I think it looks ok. Better than cracks.
-I notched out the table legs with the skill saw and I thought they looked pretty rough and it was a long process. When I made the bench legs, I used my table saw to notch. I'm not sure if this is recommended or not, but the notches were much cleaner looking and it was a lot easier.

We needed a big sturdy table for 8-12 persons for our big dinning room but didn't want to pay 3000$ for it. Then i found Ana-white's site and thought "why not!". It's my first project, i started whit the bench and then made the table. All buy myself, my husby doesn't even know how to use a saw. He help me carry it inside thought ;) The plans were realy easy to follow. Somebody stop me, i'm refurnishing my hole house, i can't stop! In 2 months i'v made 2 dinning tables, 2 patio tables, 1 coffe table, 5 benches. So if i can do it, you can too!

It's decorated now, but looks amazing without as well. The build plan was easy, definitely need to have some knowledge about woodworking. Just have fun and be creative.