Community Brag Posts

Made my wife a Ana White DIY porch bench for our 10 year wedding anniversary. Had a custom plaque made: Sarah’s Bench.

Looks beauty on our front porch.

Jesse Micak, Ontario, Canada 

I have been wanted to build this table for over a year and finally had the time for it. The plans made the cuts very simple.

I made this as a birthday present for my two year old neice. It was really easy to make even for a beginner like myself. My five year daughter has been asking me every day if I would make her one "just like it" for her dolls, so I guess I know what I'm doing this weekend!

One of my best friends got married a while back and for their wedding gift, I wanted to build them a piece of furniture. I had purchased a piece of 1x12 from Lowe's a couple of years ago because I thought it looked cool and finally found the right project for it.

This is a simple and cheap way to decorate any space. Just use some 1x2's to make a square frame. Stretch the fabric over the frame and staple it. You can make one large one or many different sized ones to cover a boring wall.

Fun, easy build. This is the first project from this site and the kids loved helping make their own chairs. They got to pick their own color paint - I think I spent more on paint than I did on the wood!

My own version, made from this nice plan, from cheap material, ( construction wood ). Tinted with Minwax Dark Oak color, finished with 3 coasts of Polycrilic.

Mario

My daughter was turning 4 and we were expecting our 2nd child in a few months and needed her crib/toddler bed back to start setting up the nursery. After googling fun big girl beds for a few weeks i came across the plans for the cottage bed and decided to sit down with my husband and decide if we could build her this bed. by building instead of buying the bed of her little girl dreams we were creating many fond memories with her and a real attatchment to it so she would actually sleep in it. We went through alot of the other brag posts first and picked out a few things we liked from each and made a few modifcations. I felt the spindles around the bed needed to be taller to keep her from falling out of the bed. We also made a door way under the slide that is now a little secret fort for her to go in and read her books and have quiet time. Under the steps my husband made a closet for her dress up clothes utilizing as much of the space under the bed as possible as it takes up most of her bed room We painted the back wall under the bed with chalk board paint to give her a art space under there as well. In the end it took us about a month to build the bed working on it on the weekends. We spent around 500 dollars including the purchase of a few tools we diddnt have and needed like the kreg jig and all the paint and princess decals. She loves the bed and my very amazing handy husband has been approached by many friends and family members to make one for their children as well.

Thanks for the GREAT plans. Slightly modified to allow more space on the top shelf.

We are developing a completely off-grid property and before starting on construction of the house, we decided to start with a smaller project to get our feet wet (no pun intended!). We also wanted a place to soak our sore muscles while we build a house since we are restricted to taking 60-second hot showers, and so we came up with the idea of a wood-fired cedar hot tub.

Buying a cedar hot tub retail can cost anywhere from $3,000 to $7,000, but we were curious to see what we could build our own for and it turns out, we spent $850. Since there were no existing plans on the internet that we cound find for such a project, we decided to document the entire process and make our own! We struggled a bit with the build, but on our blog we documented what worked to save other people time who want to build something similar. In our post here, you will find a 9-part video series on how we put the hot tub together. Enjoy!

This was my first building project, made possible by finding this wonderful website. The beds were made from the Classic Bunk Beds plan. Several months later I added a slide made out of melamine board and 2x3s - very sturdy and somewhat overbuilt to compensate for not using any plans for the slide).

I used Minwax polyshades for the finish - my first time finishing wood, and let's just charitably say that I learned a few lessons in doing so.

The steps are a repurposed solid pine Ikea Trofast unit - it worked very well for the kids (4 and 2 when the bed was built). However, it wasn't a great choice for getting my wife and I up to the top bunk - one of the top panels eventually broke... leading to a big bruise for my wife and strict instructions that I quickly build a new, more solid staircase option - to be shown in a future brag post.

All in all, I am very thankful for this website and its plentiful plans - more brag posts to come!

I live in Japan right now and my wife and daughters went to the states to visit family for 3 weeks. I decided to make a few projects. I went to my local home improvement store (HOMES), which is a combo of Lowes, Walmart, a pet store, and a furniture store rolled into one crazy store. I purchased the wood for about 11000 yen, paint for 1080 yen, hinges 800 yen, and door knobs for 2880 yen. Grand total of basically $200. I found that it is not cheap to buy supplies over here. I modified the plan and made 16 "drawers" instead of 20 due to the height of the space where I am putting the table. I used the plan for finishing with the distressed coffee stain. I really like it in our room.

This is the first thing I have ever made. I had my wood cut at Lowe's, bought a Kreg pocket hole jig and screws. I borrowed a friend's drill, sander and stain. I was amazed at how easy this was and how well it turned out.

This was made using Ana's "Garage Shelf" plans. I modified it for a corner spot between two exiting cabinets, so it took a bit of thought, but the Ana's technique for the build made it so easy.
AND I used up scrap wood that I'd been hording in the garage for the build.
Thank you Ana!

This was a project undertaken to facilitate my current pursuit of learning how to cook, but I think it will serve me well as I study, too, holding my textbooks up. It also let me experiment a little with staining and with using milk paint (which has NO VOCs but is kinda weird to work with). And it let me put to use some scrap wood that I think I was unconsciously saving for something special.

Because I had a scrap pile, screws, a few hinges, and the finishing products, this project was Almost free...I had to buy a narrow hinge ($1.50? I think?), and I chose to buy some pretty page weights ($3 including both pendants and the chain). So...not too bad, right? For a solid book stand that has meaningful beauty to me?

Ok, so this is all scrap wood. The stained pieces are maple leftovers from my cabinet project, and the rest is a mix of pine and poplar. See the dimensions in the last photo. The paint is Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint in Lucketts Green, and the stain is Red Chestnut oil-based stain by Minwax. I finished the whole thing with one coat of wax buffed to a soft sheen (my new favorite finish).

I used a miter saw for my cuts and a router for the kickstand grooves, but really a regular circular saw would've worked just as well (or better, for the grooves). It took me several days to finish this project, but there's no reason it should take (someone other than me) more than an afternoon.

This was a pretty easy build, always a plus when you're looking for more storage. I'm not sure about the darkness of the stain though; I usually go with a walnut to match the rest of the house and wanted to try something different. This seems like a bit much. Might be easier to build an entire second set vs re-doing the stain though...