Homemade Coffee Table

It was time to get a little more grown up in tables and the train table needed to move on.  So I turned to Ana White and her awesome plans.  I modified her plans for the Adirondack Coffee Table and created this a little wider and longer (49" x 33") with a lower shelf that will hold up to 6 of our toy buckets.  It's 20" tall to accommodate the extra storage.

New headboards

Little by little I am working on getting the boys' room together. Joe wants a red white and blue bedroom and the headboards were the first project for me to get it all kicked off. Next I need to get a couple gallons of Navy blue paint up but that will take a bit of time. :) Originally I intended to paint the headboards with a few more coats of paint, but the knots showing through is kind of cute. Would you fill it in? I keep going back and forth...



I used the free plans for the reclaimed headboard from Ana White, though I modified my legs to be a little shorter.



This only took about 4 hours to cut the wood and build TWO headboards (one for each boy) and a little more to paint. I had some wood already in the garage but I think would have had to spend about $25 total if I had bought it all. If I were to do it again I would have sanded the boards that go across the back on the edges before I put 'em together because I had to use a chisel to separate them a bit. Otherwise they were too flat up against each other.

Below is one of my upcoming projects. I have removed the drawers that are falling out and I'm going to repaint it. It's for work (think 'cubicle farm' in battleship gray) so I am tempted to just paint it chocolate brown to blend in but I kind of want to go light and bright, too. Teal? Decisions, decisions. What color would you paint it (keeping in mind that it's going to my workplace)? I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

Building a DVD shelf system

Please, please, PLEASE ignore my flood curtains. I am moving the green curtains upstairs (only cream down here soon) but I haven't finished their replacements yet and they're a little short.

As many of you know I am completely over the moon about finding the KnockOffWood blog. I have SO many projects in the works right now, some from her plans and some of my own design, now that I'm inspired to be creative. I have just finished off one of my family room projects that I was inspired to create after going through the easy plans at KnockOffWood. Note, this is not one of her plans but I did adapt some ideas from there.

If you're interested in doing something similar I have posted below the steps I took in making the shelves. If you've never built something yourself before I would highly recommend checking out Ana's site and looking through some of her instructions first as she gives some really easy to follow instructions and tips.

I decided that I didn't have enough space for my movies as I was stacking them two deep just to fit them on the current shelves. I thought about putting them in a binder and chucking the cases but really my kids still flip through boxes (and the boxes end up scattered around the house). If the movies were in a binder I'm worried that they wouldn't get put back and they'll get scratched without the boxes. So instead I decided on a new shelf for them that will hold everything without taking a bunch of floor space. Since my downstairs has 9 foot ceilings I made it 8 feet tall (plus 6 inch feet) by 4 feet wide. I gave it the 6 inch feet so I could clear the 5 1/4" baseboard and still be flush to the wall.

My shopping list:
8 - 8' 1x8 boards (be sure they're nice and straight)
1 - 1.5' 4x4 post scrap
56 - shelf pins

My cut list:
A) 2 - 96" (8') 1x8 (sides)
B) 1 - 94.5" 1x8 (middle upright)
C) 2 - 48" (4') 1x8 (top and bottom)
D) 16 - 23.5" 1x8 (shelves)
E) 3 - 6" 4x4 (feet)

Two of the D shelves (in the middle) are screwed in for extra stability but the others are held in place with shelf pins. You should mark and drill all of your pin holes BEFORE you screw this together. Keep in mind that the middle upright is offset from the sides by 3/4" on the top and bottom (to make room for the top and bottom shelves) when you're lining up the holes for drilling. Also, you'll see that my bottom shelf is taller than the rest for a couple reasons. First, I wanted the shelves to each be tall enough for the movies and a couple fingers (so they're easy to remove) but no more so as to fit in as much as possible. Second, I wanted a little room at the bottom for decorative items. It's a good idea to pre-sand all boards at this point rather than trying to get into corners later.



Once everything was sanded I just screwed boards A and C together into a rectangle and then screwed board B in from the top and bottom. I then screwed two of the D boards in the middle in place. I waited to attach the feet until after painting the rest because with feet only on the front there was no way this was going to stand up on its own with them on. Holes were filled with putty and then one more quick sanding to smooth those out.

It was freezing outside when I painted this and the primer can said 50 degrees or warmer so I moved it indoors to my dining room and painted with the windows open for ventilation. The whole thing has a coat of primer and two coats of paint total. I went ahead with a satin finish since the kids will be touching it a lot and it will have to be wipeable.



After it was all painted I pushed all of the pins in and set the rest of the shelves in place to check the fit one last time before I attached the feet and installed it.



The feet were then screwed on and the whole thing was secured to the wall studs in several places to make sure it won't tip over (it is only 8" deep so securing it is essential!). You could fill in the holes for the feet with putty but I didn't. I choose not to both because if I move later I want the feet to be removable (who knows if I'll still have 9' ceilings) and also because once the shelves are loaded I won't see the screws anyway. I did go ahead and dab some blue paint on the heads after they were in though.

An installed picture before it was loaded with movies:



And the finished product, all loaded up:



All of the kids' movies are on the bottom for easy reach and my collection now has room to grow. Yay!

Knockoffwood Coffee Table completed

In my last post I showed you an unfinished preview of the table I've been working on. I have finally completed it and can't wait to encourage you to check out the site I got the plans from, knockoffwood. A similar table is almost $400 from Pottery Barn and I made it for $25. Can't beat that.

Plans for the knockoffwood table are here.

To start with, cutting all of the pieces took me about 1/2 hour. It took me 4 hours to assemble it, so clearly I'm not very fast yet but I'm improving as I go. I went with two coats of stain and three coats of poly. The layers of finshing themselves didn't take long at all but it took me about a week just because of drying time (8 hours per layer of stain and 5 per layer of poly because it's been snowy cold here).

When cutting the pieces I labeled the end of each with the letter from the plans to make it simpler later.



I messed up a little on one of the aprons as I cracked the spacer apart even though I had predrilled. The wood is really soft (pine/fir stud grade) and the drill more powerful so the screwhead went in further than the countersink and broke it. Still, it's sturdy and I had no problem adding the second screw for the apron lower there.



A partially assembled table:



Before I attached the breadboard ends (but after assembling the rest) I cut the top boards. I placed them on top and lined them up so when I screwed the breadboard pieces down I knew they were a tight fit. Then I flipped the whole thing over to screw in the rest. I screwed the tabletop in from the bottom and went overboard on it. I figure I'll have 5 kids jumping on this table so I want it to be STURDY.



Here it is all assembled before sanding, etc.



The one thing I wish I'd done differently is that I didn't sand again after putting on the stainable wood filler. So there are two spots that aren't very pretty (not pictured because I'd be too embarrased) and I'll not make that mistake again. Ah, well.

A couple closeups of the tabletop:





This is the Pottery Barn table below for comparison.



And a small preview of my current project is below. I designed a VERY simplistic DVD storage system made from 8 1x8 boards. It will be 4' wide and just over 8' tall with the 4x4 legs I'll attach to the front of the bottom to make the base level with my baseboards. Obviously this will be attached to the wall on the back as it will be over 8' tall and only 8" deep. Also, to the side you can see more wood for the project after that, a console table to match the coffee table, also from knockoffwood (though I'll be modifying the plans slightly to add two shelves).