Our First Build

As Bradyn and I were getting ready to head off to dental school we talked about what hobbies we wanted to do together. I suggested picking up tennis. Bradyn suggested woodworking. Bradyn is really talented with his hands and building things has been sort of an outlet for him. And he is a perfectionist. Me on the other hand... I start off strong but by the end of the project I'm cutting corners and doing sloppy work trying to speed up the process. Together we make a great team. Everything starts off exciting as we begin our projects. But about 2 hours in I'm grouchy and trying to convince Bradyn that the "little details don't matter", "I like it like that", or "its rustic". For our first project we made a bed! It was actually pretty easy. We had to buy some power tools (which I think was Bradyn's secret plan all along). And by "some" I mean a miter saw, nail gun, air compressor, palm sander, and a skill saw. We are grad students now so some of these things were inherited (thanks dadio) and others were Ksl finds. We bought these tools slowly one by one as Bradyn convinced me we HAD to have them for the bed. Honestly it made things so much easier but for anyone wanting to attempt this... You probably could get away with less power tools. 

I found this plan on Ana-white.com. I only discovered her website recently but she is AMAZING and her website is so cool. Pretty much any wood project you can imagine and some you would never think of!

Here is a link to the bed. 

http://ana-white.com/2009/10/farmhouse-bed-save-158100_7467.html

These plans are so detailed with a shopping list and cut list and everything!

For just the supplies (not including power tools) we spent $150 like the plans suggest. Here is our pile of wood.

Assembling it went a lot faster than I thought! And the nail gun was pretty fun. 

Here is the finished product...

Pretty cool, right? I still can't believe we made this!! The bed is almost perfect but I did convince Bradyn we didn't need to paint the backside of the headboard... No one sees that anyway.