Community Brag Posts

I absolutely love how this turned out! Great plans! I used a lot of old wood my grandfather had so this project was extra special. 

I built this for my son's bedroom, but modified it to fit our needs. It is 42" high, 38" wide, and 18" deep. I did a double thick top, which I love, and my Dad routed it for me. This piece is solid! I am very happy with the result! Sorry for the not so great cell phone pics!

My first build, a small side table for our newly decorated guest bedroom. Adapted from the Mini Farmhouse Bedside from Ana's website and the side table from her book.

The top and shelf were made from reclaimed oak panels from an old wardrobe.

I now have a second table and a farmhouse bed to make. I constructed without a Kreg jig but am thinking of buying one now to make construction cleaner.

I had this wine refridgerator that my wife gave to me years ago for a birthday and it really needed a home since it's been sitting in the corner of our dining room for several years.  After seeing some of the adaptations of the Printer Cabinet, I decided to try to modify if for my use.  I put pencil to paper and came up with a two sided design that would hold the refridgerator and all of our wine/bar glasses as well as some liquor.  It came out much better than I expected since this was my first real go at making any kind of cabinetry.  Measure twice, cut once really works.  I am eager to start my next project.  Thanks for the inspiration!

I built this Fancy Hall Tree with cherry hardwood and cherry plywood. The lower bench is done with rabbet joints and dados instead of pocket hold screws but the upper portion is all pocket hole screwed together but instead of laminating a large piece of plywood tot he back I cut individual panels and dropped them into rabbets like a picture in a frame.  The supporting wings are connected to the base and the back panel with pocket screws as is the panel to the base.

After building a custom sized farmhouse table by combining and tweaking the two plans here, we knew we wanted another piece of dining furniture as substantial as the table and in the same style. The farmhouse bench was the logical choice!

After calculating our desired height and length (our table is taller, but not a long as Ana's) we jumped right into building. Other than waiting for the glue to set and the stain to dry the building itself took less than two hours.

Before we stained the table we distressed the wood by tossing a bag of screws, nails & miscellaneous cabinet hardware against the bench top, followed by random scatterings of hammer blows and a few fuax-nail punch holes to make it seem more time-worn and aged (we used the same process on our table before finishing it). The key was to not go over-board and keep it random to make it seem as if the marks had been acquired over many years.

We love how both pieces turned out, from the cost to the look to the peace of mind knowing that it won't break our hearts to see the furniture get a little scratched or banged here & there as well as the substance given by having a solid wood dining set. This is one bench that won't flip over willy nilly. :)

We have not had a headboard for our king size bed since we bought it 5 years ago. We upgraded from a queen and just never bought one. Since moving into our new home I've been going for a rustic look in the home and I knew this headboard would be perfect. I did lower the height of the headboard to be 4.5' and for the back panels you still only have to get the 6 foot length for a king.

I made these tables using the rutic x end table plans. The finish I found on shanty2chic.com

This project was fun. The hardest part was trying to find barn door hardware. I did end up finding one on amazon but it was still too long and had to cut it down. Very doable in a weekend.

Since we don't have a garage or any really good place to keep our tools, they end up all over the house while we're working on a project. So, we decided to build a cabinet that would look nice in our house, and also house our tools. We chose the armoire plan because it has plenty of space.

This project took us forever, so it's hard to really estimate the actual working time. We began working on it back in June, then we were evacuated because of a forest fire.... By the time we got back into our house and we were organized again it was the end of July.... and now finally the end of August it's finished. It took us a while, but it's a great addition to our house!

We modified this cabinet by using 1/4 inch beadboard backed with 1/4 plywood for the doors. We also modified the size of the armoire to make it deeper.

My sister had all her jewelry on a jewelry tree and couldn't see all of what she has. So I had an excuse to make her something, yay
The front is glass but I don't recommend using glass unless you have the exact size. I broke the glass while cutting it so I had to get help from my neighbor the the art frame maker. I added felt to the bottom for random little things and screwed a dowel in for rings. We're gonna attach it to the wall someday when were up to it but for now it sits on her bedside table.

I made a headboard for my sister a few years back out of Black Walnut and she's been after me ever since to build a dresser that matches it. She found the Kendal Extra Wide Dresser plans and sent them to me. I made a few modifications with thicker legs, larger upper drawers, and height. Thanks for putting these simple plans out there.

Shawn

Entryway locker cubbies, top portion constructed in custom width and shelf height. Two sets.

Built this mini farmhouse style bed for my daughters 18" dolls... She loved it, thanks Ana!

This was my first real woodworking project and I feel like I learned a lot that I could pass on to others taking on this project. First post here!

It was a lot more time consuming than I thought. It is hard to estimate how many hours I put into it, but I'd say at least 20-30 hours of actual work is required. As a first-timer there was probably a lot of wasted time, and trying to squeeze in time for this around work, family, and other priorities probably added time. Other than a couple of days where I put in a solid 4-6 hours of work, the other days were an hour here or there that I could squeeze in. I decided to sand, prime, and paint everything before assembly. I think this was best for me, but I can see why others have recommended painting the entire bed white and then cutting in the color. After assembly there was definitely some touch-up required.

It also cost me a lot more than what others had posted. I spent around $900 for the project, including everything that was required...wood, new saw blades, new jigsaw blades, sandpaper - lots of it, screws - about 600 total, kreg jig, primer, paint, hinges, hinge supports, extra wood for a few mistakes along the way. I'm in Southern California and bought everything at a major home improvement store, so I probably didn't get the best prices on everything, but it is convenient to our house.

I started with taking the plans for the playhouse loft bed and playhouse loft bed with storage stairs - thank you so much for these! I built everything in CAD and converted it to a full size bed. This was very helpful for me as an engineer to see how everything was going to fit together. Even then I made some mistakes along the way! One of the best things this gave me was a consolidated cut list that showed me how many common size/lengths there were...like the 66 1x2x11.5's needed for the rails and the 13 1x3x68.5's (I attached this pdf here http://ana-white.com/sites/default/files/bill%20of%20materials3.pdf). This way I could set up a block on my saw and just knock out the cuts all at once and have them all be the same length. Building it in CAD also saved me on a few things, such as using a 1x4x120 instead of the 1x3x120 called for in the plans, which was not available at the store. This affected the dimensions of the stair walls and a couple of other things.

Things I learned along the way:

- pocket holes are cool and very useful; the kreg jig was well worth the $100

- wood isn't straight or square (I know, obvious for you pros out there!): the bends and curves over an 8 foot length of pine can be quite dramatic

- my garage floor isn't flat: assembly of the first rail taught me this!

- the rails are by far the most time consuming part of this project, between drilling pocket holes, assembly, filling pocket holes, sanding, priming and painting all the nooks and crannies, I probably spent 90% of my time on the rails...but my 5 year old really enjoyed drilling many of the holes and filling them with the kreg hole plugs and glue

- 4ft x 8ft MDF is incredibly heavy so you will need help to transport and it actually measures 49" x 97", so I didn't realize that I needed to cut 1" off of the height for it to match the 48" I had planned for...that would have been much easier to have the store cut for me! No table saw in my tool set...

- even with the help of CAD, I got confused during assembly on some of the directions, such as which wall would be facing outside or inside. This really only affected how I was trying to hide assembly features and screws, but something to look out for when you assemble. I replaced a couple of trim pieces that weren't as perfect as I wanted

- I used a lot more pocket holes during assembly than I expected, which was another reason that I say the kreg jig was well worth it

Differences in my plan:

- the stair widths are adjusted down to 22 3/8 from 22 1/2...you don't want the stairs grinding against them walls when you open and close them. You should check your actual width of your stair area before assembly because things might be different for you and squareness also affects this.

- I have four total stairs to account for the full size bed width, so heights and depths of each have been adjusted

- the lowest stair needs to be slightly shorter to account for the arc when raising/lowering it. As dimensioned, it will interfere with the front legs, so I used 10 1/4 depth instead of 10 1/2.

- I felt like the bed needed more support underneath so I added two more 2x2's with pocket holes on both ends

- I added hinge supports to the storage stairs to prevent squished fingers

Still thinking about added a window or door or some kind of access to the tallest stair compartment from inside the playhouse area...it is really tall so anything going to the floor in there might be hard to get out. The outer stair wall still seems kind of loose so I'm not sure if I need to add more pocket holes where it attaches to the back leg/wall or what. Not sure if I can add CAD models here, but I can supply them if anyone is interested.

Had a lot of fun making this! Followed plans exactly!

I can't thank Ana enough for her plans on this project. We recently purchased a big project house that was going to need a lot of work (and a lot of money.) That's why I was thrilled to find Ana's plans for the exact West Elm Wood Slat Sectional I was eying for my screened in porch. The exact configuration at West Elm would have cost $2130, but I built it and sewed all the cushions for just $288! Ana's sewing plan was really helpful too, but I altered mine to include zippers in the back to remove the fabric for washing, and ties to hold the cushions securely to the sectional. We finished the sectional with super easy india ink and poly for a deep black finish that still shows the wood grain. The screened in porch is now our favorite room in the house! Thanks Ana!