Community Brag Posts

I made this coffee table almost a year ago. It has withstood the use and abuse of my five year old and still looks great!! Thanks Ana for the awesome design!

First "big" woodworking project.  A lot of fun and my daughter couldn't be happier 

Built this from the plans on this site. I beefed up the top frame with 2 extra 2x4's

Built out of love for my 3 year old and 1 year old daughters. Christmas morning was awesome! We also bought play kitchen pots and pans from IKEA and a couple of play food sets off of Amazon. Had an old push button led light for closets that is inside the oven. It is on a timer set for 30 seconds so the batteries will not drain too fast.

Great plan & project for the kids.

Have always liked sliding door style furniture and once I saw this, I was inspired.  

We were in need of a dining room table--we were hosting Thanksgiving and finally wanted a "grown-up" table! We are huge fans of Restoration Hardware, but not their prices. The Shanty plan was exactly what we were looking for! We love the table, the size is great for our dining room--we left the top at 8 ft. The finish is also what we were looking for; it is something like a weathered barnwood look, though now that the dining room is painted it comes across more steely blue-gray. Still, it is exactly what we were looking for.

We also made an accompanying bench, which you can see peeking out from behind. That has not made its way to the staining process yet, but we are now in the process of building the sideboard and hutch, so we'll just stain everything at once.

It was our 3nd project using Ana's plans and we love it!

Perfect for our 5 year old! He's too scared to climb Big brother's scary bunk bed ladder. This one is much more to his liking!

My husband is going to be busy now that we've discovered you Ana White! 

I took down a gate for my parents that had been up for over 20 years. I couldn't bear to get rid of the wood. I found these plans http://www.myrepurposedlife.com/rustic-industrial-narrow-bookshelf/, and modified them. I wanted wider shelves with more space in between shelves, and I wanted a steel bar in the back. It took a lot of planing and sanding to get the wood ready and there are challenges to working with wood that has been outside for over 20 years, but nothing beats the look of truly vintage wood. I love the color variations caused by weathering and the rusted screw holes throughout the wood. I got steel bars at home depot, sprayed painted them with rustoleum bronze spray paint, and drilled holes in them with a cobalt drill bit. I used steel wool dissolved in vinegar for the stain and finished off with three coats of polyurethane.

My husband and I spent an afternoon making this beautiful headboard. It turned out great and I am so happy about the upgrade to our bedroom. 

Hi I made this seesaw for my great nephew's 2nd birthday off plans on your website. I painted mine and covered seats with yellow vinyl. I found the plan really simple to use and not an expensive project. I delivered it to the party at the farm and it was an instant hit. Linda Byron (great aunty), Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

After completing the table and being very happy with it, I had an overabundance of confidence making this bench. That probably is why it was so frustrating when things didn't go so well.

I made a few errors but two really stick out to me. The first was making the pedestals too much like the table pedestals. I screwed and glued an extra piece of wood on top of the bench pedestals (just like there is on the table) before I returned to the plans. This was not an easy fix and involved crowbars, chisels and cutting the heads off of stripped wood screws. Lesson: READ THE PLAN!

The second error relates to why the bench is a shade or two darker than the table. We used the same can of stain, but neglected to use wood conditioner. It appears that the wood conditioner (or our failure to mix the stain well enough) on the table made the stain much lighter than we expected. We have since fallen in love with the table's color; however, the bench came out the color we had originally expected for the table, which is much darker. We are going to do a test at some point to determine whether it was the wood conditioner or just the poor mixing that lightened the table. One other possible explanation is that we got the wood from a different place. This wood did seem a bit softer, in case that makes a difference. As a result of this color difference we are going to literally sit on it (the bench) for a while and decide whether we will strip and re-stain the table. It seems easier to re-do the table darker than lighten the bench since all we would need to remove is the poly. We're not in a hurry though. We might end up liking it well enough like we did the table. The bench almost matches our son's highchair, so it almost looks intentional. Lesson: TEST THE STAIN FIRST!

Fixes and stain-color aside, the bench was not terribly difficult to make and the plans (when I bothered to read them) were very easy to follow. I'm looking forward to bringing these lessons to the next project. My wife is requesting Adirondack chairs. Fortunately for us both, Mrs. White has shared some very good looking chair plans. Stay tuned.

First DIY. Took roughly 17 hours completed over 3 days. Used untreated pine from Home depot for top and untreated cedar (the only 4x4's available) for legs.

Total cost $270

Top stain: weathered oak (2 coats)

Top finish: Rustoleom polyeurothane clear satin

Legs: undercoat of Behr's Nautical blue and two thin coats of a white paint we had on hand. Then we distressed with an orbial sander and a 220 grit paper.

A few weeks ago I was getting ready for work and was excavating my shoe collection in search of my brown wingtips. Although I had managed to curate a pretty respectable collection of dress shirts, slacks, suits, and shoes, I still relied on a cheap coated wire shoe rack that could likely double as a grilling grate for my bbq. This was amplified by the fact that is was meant for about half the number of shoes I was using it for. I know, first world problems. It’s tough out there. So, I decided to build a two piece unit that I could stack atop one another or use it side by side in the future.

I used your printer cabinet plans however altered them  a bit.  Wood is various  including gum, cherry,pine, etc.  Enjoy and thanks

I was looking for a desk with sort of a "campaign furniture" style feel to it, and came across Ana's plan for the X Desk with Drawer.

I made a lot of changes from that starting point, some of which worked well, some of which didn't. In the end, my desk varies pretty drastically from the original, but I definitely have to give credit for lots of helpful tips and inspiration from Ana's plan!

It's a little rough, but it's one of my first real builds, so I'm pretty happy.

Note: picture does not show spreader on back legs, added afterwards. Drawers are out while guides dry, they normally sit flush with front face.

Made from pine, with poplar edging on front. Mostly pocket hole joinery. Finish is a light version of the Minwax Dark Walnut (looks lighter in picture than real life.) Lacquer coating. Pulls are from Home Depot.

To give it an antique, campaign look, the edges are roughed up a little, the finish is left a little streaky/worn, and the holes for the drawers were cut out of the board by hand, and then hand-fit to the drawers.