Community Brag Posts

I love how my fireplace turned out!! It took a whole day to make and I did end up scaling the design up to make it a lot bigger. Love how it turned out!! 

We had a big wall in our living room and nothing to fill it.. To buy a piece of furniture this size would have been so expensive. I worked on this piece over a week and a half... during kids naps. I used cove molding around the outside edges instead of the two base moldings on top and bottom. I added a very large crown molding on top. I wasn't able to find a prefab base molding thick enough that was stain quality so I just used a 1x4 and another molding on top of it. I made 4 shelves but after getting out all my decor I decided to only have one on the left side. I applied edge banding to finish off the plywood edges on the shelves. It was super easy to use and was stainable. The kreg pin hole jig was used so that that the shelves can be adjusted to different heights. I'm planning to order cabinet latches for the doors.. for both look and function with two little kiddos. I used minwax dark walnut stain. Oh, I also added a support underneath the middle bottom section.. it really needs it otherwise its flexible.. I'm very happy with how it turned out.

Only minor modifications from the detailed plans ont he website.  Used 36" legs, as my wife and I are on the taller side.  Also added trim around the outside of the drawers and around the top.  The trim was raised 1/2 over top edge of the table to make a lip as a hard stop for the topper.

This was our first build from this website and we are so pleased! Having seen very involved plans on an Australian website for a similar sandpit, I was so pleased to come across this version, with its far simpler design!
We wanted a slightly bigger sandpit, so I needed to do some modifications, and while I was enlarging it, I also converted to metric sizes, and designed specifically for the timber I knew I could buy locally (very obscure and inconsistent seeming German sizes). So the end result is a 1.5x1.5m sandpit, that has so far had 6 kids playing happily in it at once!
I've put in the drawings I used, and the cutting list for larger sizes in case anyone else is working in metric, or wants a bigger size!
Our other modification was to offset the shorter sections of the base to run along the front plank of the bench seat - there were two main benefits for this - we need a lot less sand, as there is none wasted under the seat, and the seat is supported and can't bow downwards!
The dimensions and layout we used are in the images.

Supplies

Timber
2 - 200 x 40 x 3000mm
6 - 120 x 24 x 3000mm
1 - 80 x 50 x 3000mm

Hinges
12 - 140mm long (the original design had 8, we went with three per edge to allow for the extra width)

Self tapping decking screws
18 - 5 x 80
48 - 5 x 50
96 - 3 x 20 (or enough for your hinges, depending on the design)

Paint
3 - 375ml PU Acrylic Paint, suitable for exterior use (top planks and seat supports)
1 - 750ml PU Acrylic Paint, suitable for exterior use (base)

Weed matting and staple gun

Sand
I calculated I would need 20 x 25kg bags - in the end we needed 11 - don't ask me where we went so wrong!

Cutting list

2 - 200 x 40 x 1500 (long sides of base)
2 - 200 x 40 x 1415 (short sides of base)

12 - 120 x 24 x 1495 (top slats - just under half a plank, to allow for waste)

4 - 80 x 50 x 245 (armrests / seat braces)
4 - 80 x 50 x 495 (back supports of seats)

I gladly paid 5 Euro for the wood to be cut in Hornbach - it should have been more than this, but the guy was generous!

12 hinges (the original design had 8, we went with three per edge to allow for the extra width)

On Sunday we had the idea, on Monday I drew up the plans, on Tuesday I went shopping! Once all our wood was home safely, we sanded it down - most edges weren't badly finished, but there were a few splinters that needed getting rid of!
The next two nights Mr W gallantly set to work with the paint brush. After two nights, the wood all had two good coats of paint and we were ready to start assembling on Friday.
I pre-drilled the base of the bench before the second coat of paint - three holes for each butt joint - with some careful measuring this made screwing the base together really easy!
The top planks were also pre drilled, but there unfortunately my tiredness made me make mistakes, and some had to be re-drilled! Spacing the planks out took a lot of time, but I am glad I made the effort. I used cereal box, and experimented with different numbers of layers - I knew I wanted a theoretical 5.4mm gap, but it took some time to get the right number of layers of carefully creased and concertinaed card!

Having got our spacing wedge sorted, we screwed the blue planks in place at either end of the base. We then assembled the green seat section, and the blue/yellow back rest. Following a tip from the comments section, we added the hinge to the seat/back combo first, as this ends up being on the underside. Once those two hinged sections were made, they were then laid in place on the base (card wedge spacers in place) and then the final hinges added. The final assembly took about 5 hours - but this was partly because we started outside, then had to move everything inside when a huge thunderstorm rolled in!

The next morning we got busy with the staple gun and tacked weed matting over the base, then it was hauled in to position and filled up! For us getting this done and dusted was important, otherwise it could have dragged on a lot, but we are terribly proud that it was done in less than a week from being fist conceived!
I hope the metric/enlarged plans are of use to someone else too. One other idea we had, which we didn't get round to building in, was a support bar to be fitted when you close the pit, so the kids can play on top as a stage when it is not being used for a sandpit!

This was my first EVER wood working project.

With that being said, it took me more than just an afternoon.
I used cedar, and all the materials on the cut list had to be sanded , since I didn't like the roughness of the cedar.
I also made the box 4x8. I didn't take into account that that would require a minimum of 48 inches for the top planks. So, some of my top planks are shorter.

I also wished I had a little more instruction from which side to screw the screws in. May sound a little needy for some of you, but I never did anything with wood before. The instructions simply read attach top planks to arm rests (or something int that manner) and I wish it would have told me from which side to screw in (or give me a picture). Looking at some of the brag posts helped a lot.

Because its larger size, I decided to make the seats 3 top planks wide (and also the back rest) and made another middle cover piece to bridge the additional gap when both seats are folded down.

Also, the cedar was VERY expensive, and all the screws, hinges, and handles almost cost me as much as the wood.

The sand to fill the box ran us another $80 (for good plays and), but that was because we made it so big.

All in all, a rather pricey sandbox, but worth it because of the large custom sizes, and the cute little seats.

Pictures show the sandbox without sand, and with some of the handles still missing. I also still need to fill the holes.

Will add a picture of finished box filled with sand when it is available.

My wife and I love this table: http://www.woodlandcreekfurniture.com/graphics/DT00100NEW.pdf so I took the Farmhouse Table plan and modified it just a little bit. I used pocket screws to join the table top and eventually wound up installing 2x4 runners on the underside to sturdy the top even more. I also used my son to help keep the boards flush while I screwed them together. He though it was wonderful to help his dad out this way.

For the table frame I used a 1" straight bit in my router to put a little "flair" on the rail. The leg bracing is 1x1 scrap that I had left over from ripping the rail to size. I used my drill press on the bracing to make the recessed hole for the screws at the correct angle. I then covered the screw hole with a 5/8" red oak dowel.

I decided to go a little more traditional on the breadboard end just to see if I could do it. Its really not that hard just more time consuming. I used a 5/8" red oak dowel that I bought at the hardware store for joining the breadboard to the rest of the table top.

My table is made of a mixture of pine and spruce. I used shellac to seal the wood before staining. Shellac keeps these softwoods from splotching when they are stained. I then used Minwax Red Oak stain. I let the stain sit for about 15 minutes before wiping it off. The color turned out great. I used my Christmas money to buy an LVLP spray gun to hook up to my pancake compressor. I used the Spray-It 3000 to apply polyurethane. I put 5 coats on the frame and 10 coats on the top itself. In between each coat I used 0000 steel wool to buff the surface. The very last coat I left alone so it would shine. It left it with a little bit of an "orange peel" finish but I thought it made the table look more rustic so I left it alone.

All in all it took me about 60 hours over a 6 month period to get the table done. When you have a real job, kids, and a house to take care of it takes a while to do stuff like this.

I've got a plan for some chairs so I think I'm going to try chairs next. They say if you can build chairs you can build anything. I've built just about everything but chairs so maybe this saying will work in reverse. If the chairs go as fast as the table did, it might take another 6 months to get one done.

The wood for this table I got for free. My brother-in-law works in the lumber business and this wood was the throw away that none of the contractors wanted. All of it had been sitting in the sun and was warped, gray, and cracked. A friend from church who does woodworking for a living planed and jointed the boards straight and square for me. The lumber is construction grade pine and spruce. Most of the money I spent on this was for the spray gun, the finish, and the hardware that I used for joining the tabletop to the frame.

A help hint I found out after the fact. If you're sanding pine and spruce with a random orbit sander or any electric sander you are going to leave little "swirlies" throughout the wood. Either sand the wood by hand to prevent the "swirlies" or learn how to use a card scraper so you don't have to mess with sandpaper. The "swirlies" showed up when I applied the stain. Before then I couldn't see them. My wife thought the "swirlies" added to the rustic-ness of the table, so I left them alone.

This table is made out of Solid Oak and took me +- 6 weeks to complete.

Thanks to Ana White for the plans as I followed them to the "t" with some minor changes in the size

Final size is 10ft long x 47 1/4 inch wide and 29 9/64 inches high

I made this car and truck for my nephew. They were super easy to make and he loves them!

Check out the blog link for more details.