Community Brag Posts

This dollhouse was super easy to make! Harper (the doll) wanted an open concept living/kitchen, and that is the first floor. Second floor are the bedroom and bathroom. Top floor is the closet. The roof is made from 3.5" slats of luan glued together and painted with black sanded paint. Notice the baseboards and crown molding? The window boxes are really cute, too! I still owe my granddaughter a garage and patio with pergola, and kitchen appliances and chairs, but that will wait until summer when she can help craft/build them. 

Harper's bed is modeled after the farmhouse bed plans available on this site, but I used smaller scrap lumber. I wanted milk paint but was unwilling to pay the high price, so I bought a sample jar of antique ivory paint and watered it down. It turned out great!

My wife and I completed our son's loft bed in December for his Christmas present. My wife found this bed on Pottery Barn's website and I found these plans on Ana White. Everything was pretty straight-forward. It was a great project and we had a lot of fun building something together. We made a few mods to the plans like height and the railings. I really like how it comes apart for moving and our son loves sleeping up there! Protip: Be careful with the wood glue where the bed is designed to come apart. I got a little sloppy and had to do some hammering to disassemble for staining/sealing. Everything went back together very easily, though.

I've been organizing our unfinished basement so that my boys have more space to run and ride their bikes over the winter. I needed something to organize our off season clothes and bins of clothes that my boys are growing in/out of. This plan was perfect. It's not my prettiest build but it's soooo functional!

Fun and easy project. I couldn't be happier with the end results. Great plan from Ana White. 

Using the plans for the modern table and simple stools, I made some modifications so it could be a bar height pub table and stools. The stools took the most time, with all the supports and keeping it level. The table was easy and I am super happy with the addition of the x's on the sides. I think it gives it a more professional look. Turned out that the angle I wanted them at wasn't possible on my miter saw, so I just had to mark the angles and cut with a jig saw. Screws were overkill for them and split the wood, so finishing nails did the job. The top was salvaged from an old ugly mdf topped coffee table. I sanded it a bit and with many coats of stain, achieved a match to the rest of the wood. Yay! Breakfast nook, complete!

Hey all my DIY friends!

This is my first build of the Rekourt Dining Table.  Big thanks goes out to Ana and Jen for providing these awesome plans.

I think I achieved this table quite well, except for a minor detail where I forgot to sand two pot holes.  It actually created a very rustik look to this table.  I decided to try the steel wool and vinegar solution combined with the black tea for the finish of this table.  I realized it adds so much richness to the wood, it's incredible.  The stain is Minwax's Dark Walnut and I topped it off with a Satin Oil-based Polyurethane.  The top and legs were also physically distressed using a variety of tools I found in my tool chest. Those included screw drivers, lag bolts, worm hole puch I created out of a leftover 2x4, chains, sanding disc, knife, hammer and much more!  That part, although tedious, was fun as it gave me the permission to bang stuff up intentionally :)

For the finish, I first started off by sanding very well, talking hours for the entire table. I then went out and distressed the tops in a very random fashion, trying to not repeat any patterns.  As I was doing this, I was waiting for my black tea to seep and be ready for application.  I poured boiling water in a large Mason jar and added 4-5 bags of black orange pekoe tea bags.  I waited about 2 hours before applying it with a foam brush, very liberally.  I allowed the tea to dry overnight and the following day, I applied the steel wool and white vinegar solution. My solution had been sitting for about 5 days, enough to start seeing a bit of rust in the Mason jar. The rusty solution ended up giving the wood an orangy/redish tone, which when seen under the dark walnut, added lots of depth and richness to the color.  Once dry and the wood had turned greyish/orangy/redish, I stained it using Minwax's Dark Walnut stain.  I did section by section, leaving the stain no more than 3 minutes before wiping dry.  I followed this (once the stain was dry) with two coats of oil-based polyurethane in satin (Varathane (Canada's version of the Rust-Oleum poly). I sanded the poly in between coats with 220-grit sandpaper using my orbital sander.

Since then, I have gone out to build about five of these, all in different lengths and sizes, including some with removable bases. The angles in the X's are a little tricky when you don't have plans for a specific size, but I have noted these down based on spacing between legs.  If any of you need andgles for specific table lengths, let me know and I may be able to help :)

Let me know what you think and happy building!

Made two of these fabulous kitchen helpers! One for my niece and one for my own active 2 1/2 yo daughter. She loves to bake with me and is always underfoot while I'm cooking dinner. This has made her so independent, she gathers her own supplies and pushes it around the kitchen to reach whatever she needs. Came out of the shower to find her scooping ice cream into her bowl for breakfast... Thanks Ana!

We could not find a large enough coffee table that we wanted so we decided to make our own.  We loved the Rustic X plan and thought if we put two tables toghether we could get the pefect table size for our living room.  Project cost us around $120 and it took us a week to complete, but we are happy with the results.  The color is a dark expresso.

I love this farmhouse style. It's 7'x3' and 30" high. I got the plans from Ana white. I just made a few changes. 

My son was finally ready for a big-boy bed and I found the plans for this bed on this website (ana-white.com). My husband and I built it w/o too many problems (this being our first attempt at building a piece of furniture). I stained it with "classic black" stain for a rustic look and my son, Max, picked the "cars, trucks, construction" theme and I ran with it. I installed some rope lighting and a closet rod (along with curtain clips and a bed sheet) for a super cool play area underneath. Along with some vintage signs, new signs, old license plates and automobile decals - my son now has a big boy room he LOVES!

This was a fun project for my three nephews for Christmas (ages 3, 2 and 2). I thought they'd each like their own little personalized desk for coloring, blocks, snacks, etc.

This was a relatively simple build with the only tricky part being the leg holes (and getting the legs to open at the exact angle I wanted). I had to fudge a couple of them with some patches that you can see in one of the photos.

I would suggest using lock nuts on the bolts. The original nuts I used were turning as the legs opened and closed. I thought that eventually the nuts might work themselves off the bolt.

The frame was built completely out of 1x6 scrap wood I had lying around my garage that had been used for shelves. I cut the 1x6s down to 1x2 and 1x3 with my table saw. I did buy a small sheet of plywood underlayment for the top.

I added black accent brackets to this project to give it a more unique feel. Love it!

Made these from plans found inside Ana's book. My wife loved them and so did my "little helper".

built for my mother, for all the grandkids

Made a couple of mods because I didn't want shelves on the two ends and changed to "z" doors. I had a welder make the hardware.