Community Brag Posts

In order to make this island a little beafier I used 4x4 wood for the X as well as the the top and bottom braces. Top is made up of glued up 1x3 maple wood. It looked really good raw, but decided to stain it to give a more uniform look. I bought the rustic handles and the bottle opener on Amazon.com. I used lag bolts and washers for the finishing accents...similar to the pottery barn island. Painted them with Rustoleum oil bronzed paint and then dabbed it with a paper towel to give it a rougher finish to it and then sprayed the casters as well. This was a fun project and are getting a lot of use out of it. Thanks goes to Anna for the plans and inspiration for this island. Rich

DIY Outdoor Wood Chairs

by Tara

I showed my wife the Laundry Dresser featured on Ana White's website and she asked if I could make one for her, but not quite so tall. I also turned the orientation to fit our laundry room space. I used primarily oak from recycled pallets to build the Laundry Basket Dresser. She wanted a work space on top, so folded laundry, empty baskets, etc. all have a temporary resting place depending on the day. From start to finish, it took me about 6 hours. She plans to stain the piece at some point, but its already in use, so I'm not 100% sure that will ever happen until we move or something. ;-) Great idea and laundry room organization!

We used pine boards for the carcass, a solid aspen panel 15" deep from lowes that we had lowes cut to fit. The doors are select pine simply because there were no suitable 1x12 boards. Hinges were from Home Depot- the lowes ones didn't come with a template. We tiled the inside with 7 boxes of "aspect" stainless steel self stick tiles from Home Depot.  We drilled a hole in thr back piece (which is MDF, also cut to fit from lowes) to accommodate a cord, and I carved the hole through the tiles with a utility knife. It wasn't ideal, but it's hidden by my lights.  No crown molding, and no trim because 1. We couldn't decide on any and 2. We like it this way for now. We had lowes cut every single board for this so we only had to screw and glue. The hinges were a challenge since we are newbs, but we figured it out in the end. In the future we are going to be more careful to check for square. The plan doesn't include shelves, which we have yet to install and we aren't entirely sure how we will. If you had the Kreg shelf hole driller rig thing that would be ideal..

Crucial detail: we shortened this project by slicing inches off the center section in the plan. Maybe took 5" off total. 

I made this box for my wifes christmas present. She has been riding horses for sometime and is planning on doing some shows. I built this box from Mimi's storage bench design, made it bigger, added a deeper box top and created the rest from looking at pictures online. Its all made of pine plywood and pine boards to keep it light. I added 4 castors to the bottom to make it easily moveable and hid them with the moulding around the bottom. Still has to be sanded and stained before it hits the barn. Its 39W X 24D X 29H. I used a piano hinge and routered the back to set the hing in. Added cove moulding around the bottom and to all the boxes around the front and side. Used a lot of pocket holes and finsh nails. Took me longer than it could have, because I planned everything as I went.  I will add more pictures when its finsihed. I would rate it intermediate to advanced depending on your skills with certain tools. 

Spent my time home from work building this for the cabin this summer. will be using coushions from ikea that are water and uv resistant as well as double sealed with removable covers for washing. 

While browsing I ran across Ana's Mantel Molding Headboard (Pottery Barn Addison knockoff) and had to have one!

I stuck to her plans except that I used 3/4" boards instead of the 2x4's, made it wider (81") for a King size bed, used some different molding elements and gave it a professional looking finish with my airless paint sprayer. Most people who see it cannot believe it is not store bought.

This of course kicked off a whole remodeling effort including two additional DIY projects that came out great. Looking in the photos they are the boxed shells above the bed and the grass-cloth framed mirror. The bedroom is now one of our favorite rooms in the house!

Teenager designed - mother approved DIY storage bed.

Been a while since I had time to actually build anything worth posting about! My wife wanted some items for her Kindergarten classroom this year, so built several items, most inspired by the Farmhouse family.

My daughter's room has no closet and is pretty small, and I just couldn't find any furniture I liked around here. But I found tons on Ana-white.com! So, her entire room (except one old bookshelf) is now ana-white originals.... the cubbies hide her clothes and toys; the dress-up center functions as her hanging closet; she colors on the easel (originally made for her brother, but he never used it...); and the doll bed serves as a resting place for several different dolls (sometimes all at once). I think I will build her the dollhouse bookshelf to replace the older bookshelf, and once she's ready for a real bed (as opposed to the mattress on the floor), I'll be building that too! The chalkboard easel was one of my first builds, and I have to say, it still remains one of the most challenging (my screws kept splitting, I had a hard time fitting things together, esp. without another pair of hands....), but watching my daughter scribble all over it nearly every day makes it worth every minute! Building the dress-up center and cubbies took almost no time at all - but it took me over a month to get them finished (sanded, painted and poly'd). Thanks again Ana for the great plans and all your hard work!

So I finally finished the dog bed I've been working on for over a month now (I've been trying to avoid the 100+ Texas heat but it just wouldn't go away!) It was based on dmanar33's farmhouse dog bed (linked below) and I just made it larger for our greyhound, Daisy. It's far from perfect but it's been another good learning project for me while practicing before I start our desperately needed King bed.

The bed was made using 2x8 for the internal structure (with one 2x4 center "slat"), 1x6 and 1x8 boards for the surround, with 1x2 as trim and 3/4" plywood for the cushion base. It is rather heavy but can easily be moved with two people. This was my first project using my finish nailer ($16 at Harbor Freight) and it was worth every penny! I can't believe I never picked one up before.

For the cushion I tried to find a cheap, thin 3" futon mattress on Craigslist to cut up (as I've done before), but after 2 days of looking online I ended up settling for a $12 full size foam mattress topper from wally world. I folded it in half and wrapped with some thick batting I had laying around so the cushion ended up ~2" thick. And for the cover I used Ana's doll mattress tutorial with some wally world Chino Cotton curtains for $16 as fabric (thick, durable, cotton and cheaper than anything I could find at the fabric store) and it worked out great! I left one end open to put a zipper into once I pick one up, so right now it is like a large pillow case, but it works just fine.

I'm very happy with the total project and I love that Daisy (~75lbs) won't be breaking it anytime soon. She has plenty of room to stretch out and it looks much nicer than the old lumpy "giant pillow" style dog bed on the floor we had before.

first project I've done in well over a decade, made it for my 3 year old son to have at the bathroom sink