Look What I Did...

Ana-White.com just put up a great tutorial. A vast majority of her posts are instructions for how to build furniture. But this latest was not how to build one of the pieces of furniture she designed, but how to design your own furniture using a free downloadable program called Google Sketchup. I was so excited about this tutorial! Now look what I've designed:

How awesome is this little storage cube? I based it on this cube by Pottery Barn. It's like a cute little side table, but the lid lifts off to show a convenient storage space. I want to build it and use it as a toy box or something. I haven't created actual instructions for how to make it, but I want to give that a shot at some point. Eek, I love this little thing, it's just so beautiful!

Time to Make the Bed

Image taken from Ana-White.com (new home of Knock-Off Wood)

This is the bed that we're making for Thomas. We started on it today, cutting out the pieces for the headboard and footboard. I learned that it's a lot of fun to use a table saw! Next step is to assemble the pieces we just cut, then build the frame, then put it all together to make a bed. I'm so excited that we've finally started making the bed.

The Book Case

You know that book case I started working on ages ago? I finally finished it. It's been built and sitting in the shed for a long time, then a couple weeks ago I primed it, and today I painted it and we moved it into the kitchen! Hooray!

I'm waiting to post pictures until I finish the hutch. We have this media hutch thing that we got at D.I. a while back. It's been downstairs taking up space and not being used, but I'm going to paint it to coordinate with the book case, then set it on top of the book case to create one big unit. It'll be gorgeous! I got lots of pretty dishes at D.I. to display/store in it. I can't wait to get it all finished and start using it.

Next up on the woodworking agenda: build Thomas a bed. We have all the wood and tools we need, it just needs to be cut up and put together.

I like making stuff and being productive. It feels good.

Lots of pictures

First set of pictures - Audrey's first bowl of rice cereal. My baby's growing up!

Hmm, I wonder what Daddy's putting in my mouth.

Whoa, what is this stuff?

Daddy, I love you...

But I'm really not sure how I feel about this goop dripping down my chin.

Actually, she enjoyed her first official solid meal. She's got a bit of learning to do before she gets good at keeping it in her mouth, of course, but she had fun getting good and messy. :-)


Next picture - the completely constructed bookcase, waiting to be sanded and painted.


We just bought a power sander today, and I'm looking forward to giving it a go.


Lastly - the crocheted corsages for my sister Janelle's wedding this weekend. All together, they look like a cheery field of blue and white daisies.


This one is for the Maid of Honor, Janelle's friend Nicole:


These two are for the mother of the bride and the mother of the groom:


And these two are for Marie and Rheanna, the excited younger sisters of the bride:


I made these corsages by crocheting each flower and leaf separately. Then I sprayed them with lavender-scented starch so they would hold their shape (crocheted objects tend to curl up). Next I used hot glue to attach them to two layers of white felt, then I glued a brooch pin to the back.


For scale, here's me wearing one of the corsages:


They're flatter than traditional corsages, but I think they turned out quite pretty. If I find time in the next few days, I might make a couple more for Michelle and I to wear. Putting together the corsages was pretty quick and easy, but crocheting all those flowers and leaves was a lot of painstaking work (especially weaving in the ends, yikes).

Getting Close!

Another update on the bookcase. Today I nailed on the back and part of the trim. There are a few areas where I need to shave off a bit from the edges to make it straight, before I can add the rest of the trim and finish it up. You may or may not be able to see it in the picture (I can, because I know where the crooked parts are), but if I were to try to add the outside trim now, it would be extremely wonky.


Unevenness aside, I am so excited every time I work on my bookcase. It's gonna be so awesome!

Progress on the Bookcase

After lunch today, Jeff taught me how to use his drill. Then with his help, and eventually on my own after I got it figured out, I attached the shelves to the sides:


And then attached the top.


By the time I got that done, it was time for Audrey to eat and Jeff to go to work. So the bookcase is now waiting patiently in the shed until I get time to work on it again. Having to start and stop so much, this project is going to take me a while. But with this little cutie helping me...


I'm sure it will turn out great!

Power tools are fun...

Okay, so the Farmhouse Bed may be the thing I want to make the most, but it's not the thing I want to make first. It's a really big project, and I want it to turn out really good. So I need practice in carpentry and furniture building first.

So as of right now, I am in the early stages of building this bookcase. It's just a simple bookcase, very basic steps for putting it together, made with very basic supplies. The cool thing about it is that it can become a sort of hutch. Build two bookcases, fit one with drawers, stack them together, and it's suddenly the perfect dining room hutch, which will go very nicely beside my refrigerator. I'm just working on the one bookshelf now, getting in some good practice and experience, but I will be making a second one with drawers and putting them together. Another cool thing about this plan is that, while I'm working on the second one, I'll already have a functional bookcase that I can use until I'm ready to put them together!

Here's what I've done so far:

We went to Lowe's today and bought the wood...


And a beautiful, shiny new circular saw...


We also got nails, screws, wood glue, stuff like that.

In the absence of sawhorses (another item on my to-do list), I improvised with what I had available. Food storage - it's not just for eating...


I used my, I mean our, new circular saw to cut the wood to the proper sizes for the sides, top, shelves, and trim for the bookcase. I could have had them do it at the store, but I wanted to try out the saw and do as much of this bookcase myself as I could. Plus Jeff needed to get to work. I learned a lot about using a circular saw and measuring wood in the time it took to cut those pieces!

When it came time to cut the back piece though, I thought the wood (1/4" plywood) might be too flimsy to support the big saw while cutting it. I resorted to more rustic measures.


Yes. I hand sawed the back of the bookcase with a utility knife. It took a fairly long time, and was hard work! This carpentry stuff can provide a really good workout.

After all my hard work this afternoon, I ended up with this stack of pieces for the bookcase...


And this stack of leftover wood I can use for the next project.


The next step is to predrill and countersink the screws to attach the shelves to the sides. I wanted to do that this evening while it was still light out. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to change the bit in Jeff's power drill. And I definitely can't drill the screw holes by hand! So I have to wait until Monday when Jeff can show me how to work the drill before I can go any further on this project.

But wow, it feels awesome knowing that I'm building something for our home, something that will be strong and sturdy and last for years and years. And I'm doing it all by myself!

MUST HAVE!!!

So, I checked out the blog that Michelle just recommended in her latest post, called Knock-Off Wood. Okay, I've done more than just check it out. I've been drooling over page after page of furniture plans since yesterday, and already have a "shopping list" of furniture that I want to build. You can't look through that website and not choose at least a couple things that you want to make!

For me, the one item of furniture that I absolutely must have is this Farmhouse Bed:

Image from Knock-Off Wood

Yes, there are several other pieces that I would like to build, stuff that would be really nice to have, but this BED! I love it!

Our bed history has been somewhat pitiful. We started our marriage sleeping on an air mattress on the floor. It was a big day for us when we bought a bare-bones bed frame and a used box spring from the thrift store. Now our air mattress was actually up off the floor!

A couple months after we got married, Jeff's parents offered to pay for a mattress for us, as a post-wedding gift. Jumping on their offer, we gleefully headed downstairs to pick out a mattress (we lived in an apartment on top of a bed store). At last, we had a full bed - frame, box spring, and real mattress!

And that's what we've been sleeping on ever since. One of my fondest dreams has long been to some day have a head board. Anything over the head of the bed would work, really, I wasn't picky. I even considered nailing up a quilt and calling it good. Deep down, I knew I wanted a real bed frame with a head board and foot board, made of wood, but figured it would be years before I was willing to actually spend the money to buy a good quality bed.

And then Michelle told me about this website, and I saw this gorgeous bed! And those deep-down dreams of actually owning my dream bed started to stir. Not only can I own my dream bed, I can actually build it!

I don't know if this will be the first project I take on from this website (I mean, we don't even have a saw yet!), but a beautiful Farmhouse Bed will definitely be gracing our home in the future. Definitely.