Christina's Rustic table and bench

Hello 2015.  2014 was a doosey for me.  I have a two year old that doesn't let me work the way I used to.  So I am hoping as we near 3 I will be able to get back to my true love!  WOOD.

I am excited about this first build I did this year.  It is my first official client ordered project.  Normally I just build something because we might like it, or I think it would sell easily.  But this time, I don't get to keep it, and I think I am a little sad about that!

 This is from Ana White's Fancy Farmhouse Table of course.  It was originally built by Whitney from Shanty 2 Chic. 

I used all the same measurements for the legs just used 7 2 x 6's for the top planed and attached to make a smooth top.  Here is a plan for the bench.

Door Shim Bed

Words cannot even express how excited I am to share this with you all! 

This bed is for my sister in law and it is by far the best thing I have built so far.  I LOVE it, she loves it, and apparently everyone she lets into her room loves it.  I am starting to think I need to make some business cards up!

I saw this picture

somewhere a while ago.  It originated from Stephanie Lynn and I fell in LOVE!  I loved the simplicity and the gorgeous wood tones of the redwood.  Did you know shims are made out of redwood?  So pretty. 

When my sister in law and I began talks of what she wanted for a bed I knew we were in for the long haul.  She is the kind of person that knows exactly what she wants and takes her time deciding if she doesn't.  I will never again make the mistake of going shopping with her.  She is the kind of person that looks through every aisle and every clothes rack of a store to find the perfect thing.  This was somewhat similar.  To be fair, everything she does and wears is picture perfect.  I decided to show her this picture just in case and she loved it.  And born was the design of this super amazing, super three dimensional bed:

I built a super sturdy frame for the box springs out of 2x4's

I then used lag bolts to attach it to the sturdy 4x4 legs of the foot board and head board

I cut spacers for the amount of space I wanted under the bed so that everything could rest on it without trying to have 5 people hold up the bed.  

I then screwed through the 2x4's from the inside to attach the sideboards.

The spacers then went in the middle just as an extra support for this king size bed. 

 

 

She chose a color darker than my personal taste would be just because I would love to see more of the natural grain, but she is amazing at putting a room together and it came out perfect and she is happy with it which is all that matters. 

These are 1x12 sides which almost completely cover the box spring.

Here is a good pic at how amazing the angled shims give effect and character to this headboard.

The headboard did take a while to construct.  Remember that these are little individual pieces that must be aligned, cut, glued, nailed, filled, sanded and stained.  I would say putting together the headboard alone took about 4 hours. 

You can head on over the Ana White's site if you would like to build your own Wood Shim Bed or have some extra details!

Catch up

A little catch up is in order.  I got called to be Young Women's president in our ward.  For those of you who do not know, that is a HUGE job and requires a fair amount of time.  So I have been a little MIA as of late.
Here is a project I did a little while ago.  I ripped down my old planter bench from my backyard, deciding it was not getting used quite the way I wanted it to be.  So now I have all this amazing redwood.  perfect for some outdoor furniture that never got built.  It is such a pretty wood and adds such nice warmth to my sad Las Vegas desert backyard.

This project I whipped out in a day for free.  I also didn't even have to do any finish work on it really because I already had done that on the fence.  Even better!  I lined the box with a burlap sack from Home depot for like $8.  So compared to the $75 that the Husby saw these online for....Well you know.

I now have a warm, friendly (and hopefully soon some yummy jasmine) to welcome my guests.

You can check out ANA WHITE to see the plan I based mine off of.  She has two different ones. The Cedar Planters for under $20 and the Planter Box with Trellis.

Elf on the Shelf sleigh

I was beyond excited to start our Elf on the Shelf tradition this year.  I have our whole December planned out with so much fun stuff.  I wanted our elf to be able to arrive in style.  I thought what better way than for him to have his own mini sleigh.  I wanted to get it done before Thanksgiving so when we came back we could put up our tree to "signal" to the elf it was Christmas time.  I was going to knock it out a couple days before we left.  I emailed Ana White to see if she would like to put together a plan for her readers to enjoy as well.  She loved the idea and put together an amazing plan as well as printable traceable template.  She did it practically overnight so everyone can build theirs in time for the elf to arrive.  So go visit Ana's site and you can build your own too.

I am totally in love with how this turned out!  He looked so cute in it.

After arrival you can keep it out as decor with a little Santa, or I am putting my 25 days of Christmas in it.

 Or my favorite would be to use it as a photo prop.  Is there anything cuter than this?

Playroom 3- Kids Table with storage

I found one of those Lego Tables at DI for $15 last year.  I don't really like these tables, but for that moment it would do and I knew I could sell it the next day for way more if I wanted.  That moment turned into many months.  We had some friends over and she commented how much she liked the table because her son loves legos.  I told her I wanted to build my kids something else and she could buy it off me when I did.  Well a few weeks later her son had a birthday.  I went and got him a present and then recalled this conversation we had had.  I called her up and asked her if it was totally ghetto for me to offer to give him this table for his birthday being as it was far from new.  She is quite the thrifty buff herself and assured me he would love it.

This of course forced me to kick it into gear designing something for my kids.  They played on that table all the time, but they really like to color too and that table does not really let you do that well.  So I constantly had colored pencils and papers on my kitchen table.  I wanted to design something that would hold storage without having to lift up a top to get to it.  I anguished over a design because I wanted to be able to have lots of kids sit at it too when we had friends over.  Then I remembered all those bar height tables that are so in right now and how some of them have storage in the center under the table.  DUH!  I said to myself, why did I not think of that sooner.  Enter ANA WHITE of course to see if she had a design on her site already.  She did of course, I used this Storage Play Table plan as my base and added a couple extra shelves.  I actually pieced together shelves from my leftover bookcase refurbish for the table top using a kreg jig and ripped down a bunch of old reclaimed wood for the rest of the "boards" in the table and chairs.  I had to buy spray paint for the chairs which brought this project to a price tag of about $10 for everything.  I LOVE how it turned out and it is big enough we could sit 8 kids at it if we needed.  I plan to build benches for when we need them that I can stack and use as a small bookcase in the playroom for added storage. 

Playroom Part 2

My playroom is really not THAT big.  It is fairly long, but only 9 feet deep.  This room is a playroom ( a must here in Vegas where it isn't feasible to go outside in the summer-unless you are in the pool), but also craft room with lots of STUFF, a tv room, and kind of the catch all room.  Previously I had two bookcases in there with all sorts of books and other hulla-baloo on them.  I decided to help the room look bigger that I would get as much off the floor as possible.  So my first step to doing that was to take apart the bookcases and build them into shelves that line the room at 15" from the ceiling.  I am tall enough that I can reach them without a problem so I can keep all my stuff up there.  However, if someone short ever moves in, then I suppose it would probably all be books or things you don't need on a regular basis.

I spaced my DIY brackets every 30 inches because my studs are every 15.  I think I only drilled one hold that didn't hit a stud when I thought it was suppose to!  YEA!  I would have loved to get fancy shmancy brackets to make this looks super cool, but on a budget, I used scraps and built my own.  I had the white paint already so this project helped a ton to get me organized and came out at a whopping price tag of FREE for the whole thing.  

Paper Lantern Tutorials

 I just had a baby and wanted to do a fun light for her room.  I LOVE the idea of fun lights and chandeliers but am too poor and too cheap to do anything for real.  I also love figuring out a fun spin on something and having it turn out awesome.  So I did some research on pintrest and here is my board of some fun ideas I liked.  I didn't find the exact things that some of these people did and I know I wanted a little cluster of lights and wanted three different ones and wanted them to be girly.  Here is what I came up with!

Top globe

I loved the look of the pom poms on the globe but crazy story, Michael's didn't HAVE any and with a new baby who knew when I would actually make it to Joann's to get some.  So I decided a fuzzy one might be pretty cute.  I used hot glue on the top and bottom and strung it pretty tight all around in a circle.  It was going pretty slow, so as soon as I got far enough down I painted it with mod podge and strung it around faster.  It just doesn't dry fast enough or stick enough to do it on the top and bottom. 

I decided that it still needed a little bling to it though.  I thought about adding some pearls to it which of course would be cute but I knew that my bottom globe would be pink so thought I should balance that out.  So I finally settled on stealing one of my daughters play necklaces and cut the beads off.  Awesome, free and I don't have to wait to go to the store to finish this project!

Middle Globe

I bought these on Amazon, but saw them at Michaels also.  This one took me two packages of 30. 

 So I pulled these little delicate things apart and cut them in half to make half circles. 

I wanted mostly only the lace part to show so I tried to overlap them enough so that would happen.  

I hot glued only in the middle of each little doillie. 

 

 I ended up gluing them overlapping about halfway over the one next to it.

I also didn't follow the wires exactly.  Once you make it around and kind of meet up with the first one and tuck it underneath the first one in the row.

 I then skipped up a row overlapping the row beneath.  Does that make sense?

And then continue all the way to the top.  

 Bottom Globe

This one way fairly easy just time consuming.  I ordered these flowers off Amazon and they came already just plain petals.  That was great and saved me lots of time cutting them off of garland or something that you might buy them at a craft store.  I used 2 bags of 200 for a 14 inch lantern.  

I already had these little rhinestones so just used those for an added element of bling.  It took a while to do this but it turned out pretty awesome.  I just made sure I glued them close enough to make it look nice and full.

 I couldn't figure out how to run three wires to these and have it look real neat so I looked into other options.  I decided to use little tea lights.  You have probably seen them.  They are submersible little lights that people use at weddings and things.  They are not very bright, but I wanted this to be more of a mood setter than an actual light.  The great thing is that they work on a remote which I stuck right next to my light switch.   I got these lights and my three lanterns at shopwildthings.com  I used  8 inch, 10 inch, and 14 inch lantern sizes.  Hope this has inspired you to do something creative too!

Pirate Toy Chest

I built this for my brother in law for Christmas. We stayed with them for New Years Eve and I took everything with us to assemble it there, well, I miss-measured a couple pieces so had to bring the entire thing home again and then they didn't get it till just now when we saw them again.  Hopefully it turned out awesome enough to make up for it.  I just painted it, but think how cool it would be with some seriously cool embellishments like brass additions, a cool handle, maybe some leather straps!

Now, that I am getting ok at building stuff I think I might be one of the coveted sisters to get drawn for Christmas.  My sister in law is already planning for this year!

Media Center

Ana White and I talked about doing this project back in December and I finally got to do it.  This is not a project for the mediocre of skill or heart.  It is actually not terribly complicated skill wise, but it is a massive project.  It took me about 7 weeks to finish it including two out of town trips, being 6 months pregnant, two little kids, one of which decided he was ready to potty train and being sick at least once.  Along with all the other normal business of life. 

This project is a copy cat almost exactly after Pottery Barn's Leighton Media Suite.  There were a few things I changed because of opinion and necessity so mine isn't an exact copy, but if you head on over to Ana's site to see the plans they will have all the things I left off. 



As stated before, this is a massive project.  The finished product is 8 and a half feet long and 6 and a half feet tall- at least.  It looks amazingly impressive when put together if you have the room.  It also is a ton of storage.  I had to steal every accessory in my house to "stage" for pictures.  The good news though, is that this is actually 6 individual pieces so you can customize it how you like and for what you need. 

CENTER BASE/ CONSOLE PIECE


 


 SIDE BASE

 
 


SIDE HUTCH (only 8 inches deep)
 

 


CENTER HUTCH  
 
 

We purposely designed this to be a narrow piece of furniture.  It would look great with a flat screen tv or it works well as just a buffet if you need a little extra storage in a dining room or something. 



The plan is not designed with shelves for the cupboards underneath.  If you want to cut wood for those shelves you will need to purchase an extra 1x12x10ft board. 



Doors:  These doors are built as a frame out of solid wood and then have a 1/4" plywood piece set into the frame so that they are flush in the back.  You can accomplish this in a few different ways.  You cut your boards and connect them with a butt joint ( No additional tools are needed to build a frame this way)/ a halved joint (you need a router or dado blade in your table saw to be able to accomplish this) which gives the same look as a butt joint but is stronger/ or a miter joint (this is how picture frames are done).  Then you are dealt with cutting a little grove into the backs of the pieces to be assembled.  You can either use a router with a rabbet tip and cut all along the inside of your already assembled door frame.  You would then need to use a chisel to make the corners of the rabbet cut square.  I would have chosen this option because the face frame is stronger and looks cleaner.  My router however, has been unreliable in the last couple of months so I chose a different option.  I measured and cut my boards using a miter cut.  BEFORE  I assembled each door frame I ran the inside edges of each piece along my table saw set with a 3/8" dado blade to cut at a depth of 1/4" so that when I assembled each frame the space for my insert was already there. 

Lessons Learned:
     - I pre-painted the pieces of a project a little while ago before assembling, and it worked out great.  This time I pre-painted as well but I think it was almost a waste.  There were so many pieces to put together on this that I had to do a lot of filling and sanding after I had assembled it.  Each box has a face frame, and my saw didn't cut my molding very nicely so I had to go back and repaint almost the whole thing after all that. 
     - I did however choose paint with primer already in it.  AWESOME.  If you had the time you could theoretically paint the whole thing with only one brush cleaning after. 
      -Always check for square.  Something in the way I built both my side base units had them both end up not being square.  Big problem if you would like to add doors that you want to actually shut.  ALWAYS CHECK FOR SQUARE  :)



Little tips and tricks:
     - When assembling door or face frames:  Line up your boards where they will be screwed and glued together, then use a piece of wood clamped on top of both pieces as you screw them together.  this will keep the front of your joint perfectly flush.  This works really well when using a Kreg jig because self tapping screws give such a nice tight finish