Community Brag Posts

My son's mancave! We made these sturdy chairs .they are perfect for his big friends!
The plans were easy to follow.

This is my very first build which was inspired by this website. I have been wanting to build something for a while but was pretty scared. In any case, my husband really wanted a standing desk for our office corner in our little house. After browsing forever and not finding anything I liked in store I decided to build. The entire project was built from materials we had laying around in the shed (1 - 1x2, 4- 2x4 and 3- 2x8 pieces for the desk top).

This was my first Ana White project, and i'm hooked! this was a lot of fun, and i've already done several other projects since.

As with any of these, the straighter and flatter the wood, the better the whole thing goes!

Gallery ledge book shelves in the nursery

They’re not sanded or stained yet but I love how they turned out!

I saw this and thought I would give it a try. First time building furniture out of dimensional lumber. Worked out for the most part. I forgot that wood dries and shrinks along its width so there are a few small gaps that eventually appeared in between the boards. I am sure they will disappear once summer's humid air arrives. All in all it was pretty straight forward. I switched which side has the towel bar and I modified the bottom shelf to accommodate wine bottles for easy storage. I had fun.

When I first saw Mimi's Faux Mantle I dreamed about building one for my house but I didn't know where. When I began renovating my Master Bedroom I found the perfect place for it on a bare uninteresting wall.

To add interest to the mantle, I stained the top and attached a faux hearth using a 1x12 painted the same color as the rest of the mantle. I also Diy'd a distressed mirror glass insert to bounce the lighting off. I added low voltage LED lights too.
It turned out better than I expected.

Visit my blog http://thepursuitofhandyness.com for a full tutorial of the building process and the distressed mirror glass.

Thank you for a very clear tutorial. Only challenge was the hinges but managed OK. I changed the position of the legs and chose some bit thicker tree and rounded the bottoms to make it more steady and easier to move around.

I modified the laundry basket dresser that you made. Here's the end result :) I allowed the baskets to hang out farther that the side due to limited space for the built in "cabinet." You can not see it in the photo, but we then wrote "dirty" in red on one end of each basket so that I know easily which baskets contain clean unfolded clothes and how much laundry I still need to do. Each person has their own "hamper" basket in their room that gets put into here when it's full and they replace it with an empty one from the rack. It's been working like a charm!

This was my third "solo" build - my husband has built several of Ana's plans, and I built a book caddy and a stepstool earlier in the month. I have always enjoyed sewing and fixing up our new-to-us house, but until 2014 I was afraid to try building so I left it up to my husband. No more! I brought both kids to the hardware store, selected my lumber, and got to work. We bought a mitre saw which has been AWESOME, so I've been using that and a jigsaw to make cuts. I would love to figure out the circular saw someday soon.

I had some issues with this plan here and there, but I can't be sure if it was an issue with the cut list or with my assembly. It wasn't anything I couldn't work around, though, and I'm really happy with the end result. I wasn't sure how to use the Kreg Jig on angled cuts, but once I figured that out the sides were very easy to assemble! Love that Kreg Jig.

Sweet pea bunk beds

Cabin in the woods!! We added Phillips Hue lighting so we can control all the lights from our phone.

Unfortunately, I just finished building this console table two weeks before Ana and Jim's plans went up on the web site! What I wouldn't have given for the plans! Without the plans, my dad helped me modify the Tryde Console Table to look more like Pottery Barn's Benchwright Console Table, but it was definitely a labor of love (and took me three months to complete, primarily due to lack of motivation and bad weather in Chicago). But I am so pleased with the final result! Because my console table is based off the Tryde project plan, I used 4x4s for the legs, and 2x2s/2x4s for the top. Some of the wood came from other projects, including the loft bed my dad built for me nearly 15 years ago! The bottom shelf is a 1x12 that has been cut with a jigsaw to "perfectly" fit around the posts. I say "perfectly" because I definitely had to use some wood filler around three of the posts! The drawers were the hardest part, and where I really could have used a plan! They are much smaller than they appear from the outside - I used 1x2s for the sides, then attached a 1x6 face to match the sides and back of the console table. Both drawers are firmly held in place by metal drawer slides, which means I don't have to worry about the drawer falling out because it's been overloaded with glassware (as you can see, the console was a late holiday present for my partner, who is using it as his bar). I should have used a thicker piece of plywood on the bottom, because as you can see, the screws attached to the drawer slides protrude. It's nothing we can't live with though! We really wanted the piece to look older than it is (hence why we purposely chose knotty boards), and with some many reclaimed boards, I knew the stain would have to be dark. We chose a Red Oak Minwax stain and applied it once to the legs (pine) and twice to everything else (mostly whitewood). Two coats of Deft later, and we love the result. It looks exactly the way we hoped it would and we love the mix of dark and light shades.

Less than $40 and fun with a Kreg jig.

I built this book rack using scrap wood and modified plans from the Full Length Plate Rack. It was a really straightforward build, and functions very well as vertical storage that takes up little space. I predrilled, screwed and glued all of the joints, vs. stapling.