Community Brag Posts

I'm so excited, this is my first furniture project. My husband was a little hesitant initially but is happy with the completed bed. This bed is so sturdy, I can easily sit on the edge and even lay down with my daughter. She loves her new bed and her brothers are a bit jealous. I told them to go through Ana's site and find something they like! Thank you so much for the projects you offer on here.

I altered the plans for a 28" wide crib mattress. Instead of a 1 x 3 on the ends of the head and footboard, I used 1 x 4s all the way across.

I also altered it to be 3" taller because I need a little extra storage space under my daughter's bed.

I did not use a nailer, just a hammer and nails. I found that it helped to use legs and shims on the bed rails frame and get to perfect level and then nail the footboard to the frame. Next, I screwed the frame into the footboard. This might be unnecessary info, but as a beginner, this part gave me a bit of trouble.

I used Behr Premium in Ultra Pure White with an Eggshell finish.

This is an adapted plan from the:

Chunky X Base Table

http://www.ana-white.com/2016/02/free_plans/chunky-x-base-table-featuri…

I made it counter height, made it skinnier at 27" depth and really long at 72" long.

Used Ana's doll high chair plans. Modified the tray with a curved hinged tray. Painted in her favorited color!

This morning my dad decided to help my build the workbench I've been wanting since we moved to our new house. I would usually do it myself but being 37 weeks pregnant I wasn't wanting to get out there on my own and lift a bunch of 10 ft boards. So we got a bunch of 2x4s and some 2x6s and threw one together... it ended up being 10 ft long and around 28 inches wide and a good 36 inches tall. Now I have a nice place to put my new saw I got for Mother's Day

http://ana-white.com/2010/09/pb-kids-caroline-craft-table

 *** apologies for the missing baseboard in the photo- we are in the midst of a remodel ***

We wanted a high quality table so we researched the Parker Play Table ($1200) and the Carolina Craft Table- ($600). 

In the research i found the plans for the Carolina table on this site- and modified them a bit (we wanted the removable storage top). 

We painted the top with White board on one side and Chalkboard on the other. 

The table has 22" legs and they can be changed out with a second set of legs when our daughter gets taller.

There is plenty of storage for all the art supplies in the unit and a art paper dispenser on the end. 

The unit is made of poplar on the inside and the legs and facia are all red oak- a very dense and beautiful wood. 

All exterior screws are counter sunk and hidden under face grain wood plugs that are surface sanded.  i chose to do no finish as the wood grain is beautiful- although i may do a timber oil or tung oil at some point - 

the project took about 2 days total time- $150 in supplies (including paint) and the piece feels substantial..... like it will be used for my daughters children. 

you will want to have access to a table saw and some clamps, wood plugs and a countersink bit for your drill

Great first project!

I actually designed & built this table on my own but it is very similar to Ana’s Simple, Cheap, & Easy Console Table. When we moved from an apartment to a house our lil neurotic jack Russell terrier decided he wasn’t going to eat unless we were both in the same room as him. So his food was put in a spot where he could see both of us even if we were in separate rooms, it just turned out that where that spot was, is the exact spot I wanted a console table. Well I couldn’t find a console table with a raised dog bowl shelf in it so I built my own. Now the dog bowls are up off the floor at a comfortable level for our fur babies & I keep all their vet paperwork, sweaters & toy stash in the drawer, all puppies things in one place.

Using only scraps from all my other projects, I modified Ana's plans to create this workspace in the house we just moved into. I changed the dimensions of the shelves to take advantage of the materials I had on hand. Additionally, though I have a lot of different things on the shelves in this picture, I'll be using the shelves more for books and reference materials, so I needed standard shelf sizes. Though this is a simple design, cutting some of the angles and installing the shelves was a bit tricky, therefore I think this is more of an intermedite project. I also added 2x4 legs to support my Mac. Can't have that tumbling to the ground!

Living room console. Three-quarter inch birch ply, and one by two clear grain pine.

I made these ledges with pine and white wood, 4' long. I wish I had used pocket hole screws to connect them, but instead I just counter-sank the screw holes and butt jointed the boards with wood screws. I filled the screw holes with 5/16" wood plugs and sanded them down flat. Then I sanded, stained, varnished, and sanded again.

Please see my process below on my blog.

Thanks, Ana!

First Project...Used pine for the base and oak for the top to match home counter top.

We sanded, stained, painted, and distressed the wood before building. That was truly the most time consuming part. The plans were great and everything went together smoothly! We decided to take off the top 2 planks from the footboard, and used those as the side rail. We created the ladder from what we had on hand. 

I chose to adjust the great design to have a free standing tree with backing and a live bark base. Fun project.

I love this antique workbench console b/c it's the perfect mix between my desire for beautiful and my husband's desire for rustic hunting lodge. (Southern girl meets Minnesota hunter - LOL). It's just a gorgeous antique look, but for far less money. I have haven't put the towel bar on the front yet b/c I keep forgetting to buy it (it's amazing how shopping with toddlers can do that to you). And in my area, mounted bottle openers are only available online, so we need to order one. I used standard stud grade 2x4's for the console, and 1x6's for the planked backing of the hutch. I also dropped the bottom shelf to the natural resting place at the bottom of the legs/top of the feet. It was so much easier for me that way as a beginner, and I really think it still looks great. This was my first Kreg Jig project - and it was so so easy. Ana is totally telling you the truth when she says it's completely worth the money to buy one. My father-in-law is a very well seasoned carpenter and wanted one after he saw some of the furniture I've built with it as a beginner! (We bought him one, of course, b/c he's awesome.)

My neighbor loaned me a shop vac and a palm sander to refinish a table, and I fell down a rabbit hole. This is the Brooke Mid-century Console Table from this site. I need to touch up paint the front, and it's not perfect, but this was my first woodworking project. I think the hardest part was wrestling with the drawer slides; I think I had to remount them three or four times. There was plenty of swearing involved with the Euro hinge as well.

I took a "Woodworking: Your Own Projects" class at the local community college, but this project was almost entirely self-taught (although I had plenty of adult supervision while learning to use the saws.)

I bought most of the materials from Building Materials Resources, a local reclaimed building supply store. And then took about a million trips to the local big box home supply stores for "just one more thing."

I had originally stained the project with Minwax Sedona Red and put some wipe-on oil-based poly on it, but the drawer fronts came out blotchy because I had used wood putty over the brad holes, so I painted those and the door brown ("Polished Mahogany" SW2838.) Then the edgebanding that I had applied on the front and stained was peeling off and looking terrible, and I didn't want to redo it.

I gave up and scuff-sanded the whole thing and painted the rest of it blue ("Still Water" SW6223.) I then applied several coats of semi-gloss spray water-based polyurethane, sanding lightly inbetween coats. I finished it off with a coat of Howards Feed N Wax and 0000 steel wool.

One tip that I have is that you can buy enormous (quart sized!) paint samples at Sherwin Williams for about $5 apiece. I used a paint sample for the brown portions, and a "real" quart of paint for the blue portion, and I cannot tell the difference in quality.

Skills learned:
Drilling pilot holes (believe it or not)
How to use the Kreg jig
How to use a miter saw
How to use a circular saw
How to use a table saw
Applying edgebanding
Applying wood filler
Staining
Building drawer boxes
Installing drawer pulls
Installing drawer slides
Installing euro-hinges (and how to use a Forstner bit)
How to use a brad nailer
How to attach table legs
Probably some other stuff that I forgot

Thanks for the plans!