Community Brag Posts

We have made several of these tables, but we have made an adjustment to where there are no gaps in the seats or the table tops!

This 7 ft fancy x farmhouse table was built as an anniversary gift for some close friends, so they'd have a dining table large enough for their blended family.

Modifications to original plans

I shortened the top to 84" long, widened the top to 40"wide, and the (outside edge to outside edge) of the legs / supports to 60". This left plenty of room for a chair on each end. The diagonal support brace cuts were not modified.

Instead of pine, I used kiln-dried Douglas fir 2x4s for legs / supports. My local lumberyard sells in 8 ft pieces for well under $10 each. I rifled through the racks to find a bunch of straight, virtually knot free (ie clear) ones.

For the top, I sourced Clear Mixed Grain (CMG) Douglas Fir. Four 10 ft 2x12s were over $250 delivered. Not cheap! But they were straight and flat. No messing around with racked or warped big box stuff this time!

I ripped them down to 10" wide with a good table saw, rip fence, and fresh 60 tooth blade. I did not cut to 7 ft length immediately. Rather, I cut down to a few inches over that (more on that in a moment). I used the Kreg jig to drill pocket hole screws underneath, but I used Titebond III wood glue and pipe clamps / 5' galvanized pipes (6 of them, in alternating directions) to clamp the top together. I added 2" coarse thread blue-coated pocket hole screws the next day - really more for peace of mind.

To cut down to 84" length, I marked the lines with a straightedge & carpenter's pencil. I then used my circular saw (also with a fresh 60 tooth high quality blade) and a straight edge clamped to the wood as a guide. This gives you nice smooth end cuts without the worry of lining everything up perfectly during glue-up. Warning - you can splinter the ends if you aren't careful.

Sanding

I used a cheap Harbor Freight belt sander with 80 and 120 grit (be careful if you've never used a belt sander before, especially with coarse grits!) to even out the top and bottom. It didn't take much, luckily. (I bought a planer *after* completing this piece).

All cuts were sanded 60, 80, 100, 150, 220, 320 and 400 grit. Lesson learned: in the future its okay to stop at 220 or so. Sanding was done with a basic Dewalt quarter-sheet sander, with a 3m rubber hand sanding block, and plain ole-sandpaper in my hand. I shaped all edges by hand with 100/150/220.

Nails & Glue

I used a pneumatic nailer and Titebond III wood glue on the legs and supports, then a nail punch and wood filler to hide any nail holes. The aprons / stretchers were fastened with pocket hole screws and glue. I used plugs on the lower one, as it is more visible. The plugs are pretty much seamless - use glue and wood filler and sand out, nobody will ever be able to tell :)

A Quick Word on Wood Glue Selection

Many of the project plans on this site (and brag posts) mention the use of expanding glues like Gorilla Wood Glue, Elmer's Carpenter's Glue etc. These long open-time adhesives are easy to work with but they expand and are not as strong as Titebond.

Stain & Poly

I used a clean rag (cut up an old t shirt..) to apply a generous coat of Minwax wood conditioner, wiping off any excess after about 15 min. I then immediately applied a coat of Minwax Dark Walnut stain. I used stain applicator pads but a good rag works just fine and wiped off excess after 10 or 15 minutes.

The top received 2 coats, the second coat applied a week later.

2 coats of Minwax fast dry polyurethane were applied via brush (high quality natural bristle brush). I lightly sanded with 220 after the 1st coat was fully dried, and with 320 after the second. Semi gloss was used for the 3rd and final coat. If I had a 'do over', I would have used wipe on poly and thinned with mineral spirits to eliminate brush marks more effectively. OR I would have used a foam roller (still thinning a coat or two with mineral spirits).

Important: I applied a single coat of poly to the underside of the table as well. Coating the entire piece stabilizes the wood, according to a few articles. This means its less likely to shrink or swell unevenly over time.

Attaching the Top

In Ana's / Shanty 2 Chic's original plans, there are comments from people wondering how to attach the table top to the supports. Originally, I planned on drilling through the sandwiched 2x4 supports and deeply counterinking screws. You can buy a surprisingly decent countersink drill bit set at Harbor Freight for very little money. You could also use something like 3M velcro tape. Either way, you would be able to separate the top from the legs for transport. If you do use Titebond III to glue it down, I'm confident it will never come off.

This is my first brag post and only my 4th completed DIY furniture project, so please LMK if I've forgotten to cover any important details.

Dan Gendreau
S Kingstown, RI

Fun weekend project! I had never tried pocket hole joins before. The Kreg jig worked out great. Looking forward to trying a bigger coffee table in this same style. Thanks for the plans!

When I saw Ana's plans for this doll bed I knew it would be a perfect gift for a little seven year old girl in my life this past Christmas. I love how it turned out and she was thrilled with the gift.

For more details about how I made the bed, bedding and quilt check out my blog at http://homeandawaywithlisa.com/blog/2013/1/3/doll-bed-with-bedding-patc…

My son was in a pirate mood and needed a ship to help sail the high seas.  So I built him one.  I added maps, used magnetic paint for the waves so that we could put fish magnets on them, and then a wheel from a playhouse kit from Home Depot.  

Dog crate / end table built from the plans on your site. Customer chose Early American Miniwax finish. This was a fun build. Thank you! -j.

I followed the directions for the apron pretty much to the "T" but I did end up using double fold biased tape which made doing the trim a bit easier (it's just what I had on hand). It took me less than 2 hours, (kid interruptions included). Easy project and great work apron!

My wife wanted something to fill up a large wall in our kitchen so I designed a collage centered over a buffet table. I used the plans from the Salsa Console that I found on this website for the table. I had to modify the plans quite a bit in order for the table to fit the space that we had. After I had the design the way I wanted it, my wife and I found the frames that we needed and painted them with a black, brown,  and terquoise theme. I built the hutch using pine that I bought from the hardware store. I used quarter round moulding strips to accentuate the drawer faces and the cabinet doors. I added glass to the center of the cabinet doors and then backed the glass with the material from one of those cheap ceiling light panels to give the glass a 3D frosted appearance. I then painted the interior of the cabinets with that same terquoise color and ran lights inside the cabinets so that the terquiose color would show through the forsted glass. I finished the table off by staining it with a dark red maple stain (to match our kitchen table and island) and then added a few simple drawer/cabinet knobs. Everything came together nicely when we hung it all up over the table. Now all we have left to do is add our pictures to the frames.

Very easy and fun project. Thank you so much for the inspiration and plan.

I shopped for these types of crates long ago, but resigned not to buy one because the professionally built ones were way too expensive ($400-$600!). So I was so happy when I saw these plans via Pinterest and got to work! I modified the dimensions to make the shortest side of Ana's original plans to be the longest side of my crate. Which ended up to be the exact width and depth of my Maltipoo's wire crate. This was my first building project ever (not counting high school shop class over 10 years ago). It definitely took longer than I expected and if I could do it all over again I learned a few lessons that I will implement when I make a large crate for my Golden Retriever, but overall the directions were easily followed and we had fun experimenting with things that work and things that don't.

1) Pick good wood-- even for the 1x3 and 1x2 pieces we just went to a big box hardware store and thought we could use just anything, but quickly found out that it was warped and cracked easily when we tried to start assembly.

2) Pre-drilling is essential- especially for the thin cuts of wood which were already soft and prone to cracking. When we predrilled we were able to avoid these headaches.

3) Invest in a good wood for the top- Since we were using as a night stand, we decided we would like to use a nice wood for the top of the crate since that is ,mostly what we would see and come in contact with everyday. We found some beautiful Birch wood on sale (plus they gave us an additional discount for a footprint--which was easily sanded off) and it was really worth it. It has some nice texture and grain patterns which really came out when we stained. Worth it!

3) I wish I would have added a drawer- Since I am using this as a night stand, and my dog is so tiny, she does not need all that head room. I could have easily extended the open slats further down the sides and installed a drawer in the upper space for bedside storage. My Golden will need all the headspace in her crate so this is something we still wont try with our next build, but I wish I would have thought of it for this one.

A modified smaller version of the dumpster dresser.

Barn door slider with all 3 shelfs stained dark walnut with a white cabinet 

I decided to modify the one piece kitchen plans for just a stove and sink as I wanted something a bit smaller. I added a shelf (or rack!) to the oven and "tiled" the backsplash with scrapbook paper and Mod Podge. The burners are wooden plaques from Hobby Lobby that I painted with chalkboard paint and on the side outside of the kitchen (not pictured) is a chalkboard and towel rack. The Kreg Jig was incredibly nice to have for this project but I did add L-brackets to the outside shelves in case a lot of weight (i.e.. a 30 lb toddler) was placed on them.

For our 5th (Wood) Anniversary I built this A-Frame Wine Rack out of Eastern Red Cedar and Birch. I found the plans on an Australian Websiite so had to convert metric to sae (hardest part of the entire project). It was easy to do and took two days with drying time. If you would like the plans let me know.

Thanks for looking!

I built this bench for a Christmas present. She loves to work in her garden and I thought this would be the perfect touch. The plans were easy to follow. I made a few minor adjustments to fit the lumber I had on hand. The center bench is only 4 foot wide so I could conserve on the amount of 2x4 I had to buy. I thought the bench turned out great!

This is a fun project and made a great gift for my mom for Christmas last year. Inexpensive and didn't take long to complete. The pull is from Anthropologie (they have some of the cutest pulls!). Thanks Ana!