Industrial Floating Shelves

16,000 woodworking plans inside...(2 days left) 

I just discovered this and suggest you see this immediately... 

BHC 14 INEXPENSIVE TREE STAND PDF Plans build your own tree stand Woodworking Download.

Click Here To Download

About a year ago, this is what our children's bedroom looked like.  Then Brent and I bought a California King bed (BTW it's AMAZING!) and it shook up the whole household.  Living with a queen size wasn't working for us anymore - snuggling with four people to watch a movie or read nighttime books was getting a little tight, which was the reason for the upgrade. We knew that with the purchase of that large bed meant Brent and I would need to relocate our master bedroom to the second floor to accommodate such a large bed.  After we moved upstairs, that left two bedrooms on the main floor, one for each kid.  

Problem is, they still prefer to sleep in the same room, so we moved both of them to the back bedroom and this front bedroom became their "playroom."  Which sounded great at first - WOW - a dedicated room to hold all of their toys!  But that soon spiraled into OMG - I can't even walk in this room because EVERY TOY IN THE HOUSE IS IN HERE!

After a year, we decided to split up their bunk beds and turn the front bedroom back into Owen's room.  This coincided with Emma's 9th birthday, and knowing the kids would probably still like to sleep in the same room together, Brent built the Ana White Farmhouse bed for her room in a full size.

I painted it with Benjamin Moore Hale Navy and our daughter is in love with it.  The other added bonus of putting this full size bed in her room means we sort of have a guest room should we need it. After finishing that bed project, I turned my attention back to Owen's new room.

I removed the heavy fabric curtains to make the windows look larger, but still needed a simple way to block out the light.  Home Depot sells cordless cellular blinds at a pretty reasonable price and they mount inside of the window frame for a clean look.  The walls got a fresh coat of paint in Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter and the ceiling, trim, doors and built-ins are Benjamin Moore White Dove.  The bed in this room is one of the bunk beds.  Brent made caps to go on the top of the bed posts and I painted it with Hale Navy.

Although all of the large windows let in a lot of natural light, evening time is a different story.  He only has one overhead ceiling fan light in his room which was doesn't put off much light.  I didn't want to mess with floor lamps so we hung a set of outdoor lights from Costco by hooks in the ceiling.  The plug in behind the bedroom door so you don't see the cord.  At night, it's beautiful in this room because of the warm light they emit.

Now onto the real project here!  I'd been dreaming of floating shelves to mount on either side of his window to hold his books, Lego creations and whatever else it is that boys like to put on shelves.

Brent began by building 4 of these shelves.

I sanded them and applied a coat of this Minwax Pre-Stain Wood Conditioner.  It allows the wood to absorb the stain more evenly.

Next came a coat of American Walnut stain.

And then for a little change of pace - I put a coat of weathered gray stain over top of the walnut to tone it down a bit.

Here's what the floating shelves look like from the back.

Brent mounted the wood support to the wall and then slides the floating shelf into it.

The make these shelves a little more interesting, we 8 sets of this hardware from the home improvement store.

We spray painted all of the hard ware with this black textured Rust-Oleum spray paint.

Here's what my spray painting station looked like:

After everything was dry, Brent drilled two holes toward the front of the shelf, put the turnbuckle through the U-Shaped hardware and then bolted it underneath.

The last step was to hook the other end of the turnbuckle onto this hook piece of hardware and screw it to the wall.  This hardware isn't actually supporting any of the weight of the shelf, so we didn't use any special anchors in the wall plate.

And here's the finished shelving.

This is what his room looks like today - well - correction, it only looks this clean when I'm ready to take pictures.  There are likely Lego's all over the floor in their now, the bed is no longer made and the books spread about.  But whatever, at least it looked good for a few solid minutes.

The floor rug was a last minute addition.  I ordered it from Costco.com to the tune of $100!  And it's a 8x10 rug that's soft and cozy - you can't beat that price!

Wood Block Christmas Countdown

16,000 woodworking plans inside...(2 days left) 

I just discovered this and suggest you see this immediately... 

BHC 14 INEXPENSIVE TREE STAND PDF Plans build your own tree stand Woodworking Download.

Click Here To Download

I saw a cute idea on Cottage Paint's Instagram feed that I thought would be fun to make with the kids.  As I opened the door to our workshop to cut some blocks, I was happily surprised to find a set all ready for me!  Turns out, I had an extra set of blocks cut AND sanded from making wood block pumpkins a few weeks ago.  Guess this project was meant to be!

We started with some wood blocking, reclaimed wood, of course :)

Brent cut this star out with a jig saw - you have no idea how hard it was for us to draw a star.  I'm talking tricky enough that we had to google it.  Pathetic, huh?

 Emma helped me do all of the painting.

Here's our first coats of paint on the blocks.  We used base coats of regular latex paint and then brushed metallic acrylic paints over top of each one.

To do the wording - because free handing was not an option - trust me, I tried - I followed Her Tool Belt's instructions.  She used Photoshop to get her lettering but since I don't have that, good ol' Microsoft Word worked just fine for me!

 We covered each block of wood with a layer of painter's tape.

 And laid our wording on top.

Using an X-acto knife, I cut around each letter.  I thought this process was going to be pretty quick.  Spoiler, it took forever.  But I put on my headphones and listened to a few episodes of Serial - which is amazing if you haven't heard it - and the time passed rather quickly.

Then I put a few coats of acrylic paint in a contrasting color over the lettering.  Peel the tape off when dry.

 For the top block, where the number of days was going to go, I used this chalkboard paint.

 I taped off a section of the block for the chalkboard paint.

 2 coats later and once it had dried, you can pull the tape off.

 At first, I was planning to glue all of the blocks together but then decided not to.  It will be much easier to store after the holidays if it isn't such a large piece, plus, it's much easier for the kids the erase the top block and write the new number for the day if they can lay it down to do it.

 This was a fun project and the kids are having a blast changing the number each day!

DIY Dollhouse Furniture

16,000 woodworking plans inside...(2 days left) 

I just discovered this and suggest you see this immediately... 

BHC 14 INEXPENSIVE TREE STAND PDF Plans build your own tree stand Woodworking Download.

Click Here To Download

One of our greatest sources of website traffic come from Pinterest with people searching out the doll house we built for Emma.  Not only did Brent build the dollhouse, he also built the furniture.  I'm not sure if you've shopped around for Barbie furniture, but if you have, you know it's expensive.  And flimsy.  We wanted to build sturdy furniture that wouldn't tip over when Barbie sat/laid/looked at it.

In my original blog post of the dollhouse there weren't any great photos of the furniture, so I staged a little photo shoot with better close ups of each piece.  I don't have any documentation of the building process since Brent made them several years ago, but I'm hoping with the dimensions provided and the photos, one could replicate the pieces.  As a side note, Brent built most of this furniture out of birch or cherry.

Baby Cribs

 In magical Barbie world, everyone has twins, so Brent built these little matching cribs.  

Dimensions are 5 3/4" tall by 4" wide by 6" long.  Brent said he first made a chunky base out of 4 pieces of wood, mitered at the corners.  Each side rail of the crib was built seperately, like fence panels, and were then glued to the base and pinned to each other with a nail gun.

You can see the small pin holes where he nailed the slats into the frame.  With all of the nooks and crannies on the crib, spray paint was the fastest and easiest way to paint these babies (no pun intended).  The mattresses are simply a piece of foam wrapped in a piece of receiving blanket that I cut apart.

Dining Room Table & Chairs

Barbie isn't doing anything if she isn't entertaining - which meant we needed a table for six.

These chairs are sturdy enough to hold Barbie and her friends in an upright position IF they have the types of legs that bend at the knee.  But really, unless Barbie has had too much to drink, her booty is not tipping out of these chairs.

Chair dimensions are 6" tall by 2 1/4" wide and depth is 2 1/2".  The height of the seat is 2 1/2".  

Table dimensions are 4 3/4" tall by 5 3/4" wide by 8" long.  Brent made the top first and then tacked each of the four legs to it.  The skirting was added last.

Bedroom Dresser

The dresser dimensions are 6 1/2" tall by 7 3/4" wide by 2 1/4" deep.

He started this piece with a solid block of cherry.  The grooves that give the appearance of drawers were made with a table saw.  To create a space for the four legs, he cut a dado/rabbit out of the four corners of the block with the table saw.  He then glued the legs in and glued the top on.

Coffee Table

I'd actually take one of these tables in human size!

Dimensions for the coffee table are 2 3/4" tall by 3" wide by 8" long.

Couch

Dimensions for the couch are 5 1/2" tall by 13 1/2" wide by 5" deep.

Here again, to make the cushions, I covered some foam in scrap fabric.

The back of the couch is cut at approximately a 10 degree angle, which would mean the arm was also cut at 10 degrees.  The seat and the front of the couch are two pieces nailed and glued together.

If I was really good with a sewing machine or hand stitching, I would have made way too many throw pillows for the sofa and bed - just to make Ken mad.

Bunk Beds

Dimensions for the bunk beds are 10" tall by 6" wide by 14" long.  

 I flipped the bed upside down so you can see how the underside was constructed.

Queen Size Bed

Dimensions for the bed are 8 1/2" tall by 8 3/4" wide by 14 1/4" long.  To create the reveal you see around the bed, Brent built a base first and then constructed a second frame to sit on top.  He built the headboard separately, like a fence panel and attached it with nails and glue.

The mattress is a piece of foam wrapped in a scrap of receiving blanket.

 Here is a view of the bed without the mattress on it.

If you flip the bed over, here's what you see.

If you're attempting to build your own furniture for some Barbie dolls, hopefully these images will be useful.  We're always happy to answer questions if you get stuck and need some help!