"You made your bed..."

A few years ago some girls at my work completely inspired me with their furniture builing skills using plans from Ana White's website, "Knock Off Wood". She takes things like Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware furniture and breaks down how to build them yourself for like a tenth of the cost.

So a few months ago I decided it was time to try it. I started with a nightstand and learned a TON just doing that project. I didn't even know how to use an electric drill before starting. Then I built a second nightstand, and then a little tower of shelves for our bathroom. And then some wall shelves for pretty much every room in the house. All of this was just a means to an end. What I really wanted to build was this....

The Pottery Barn Farmhouse Bed.

So simple, so beautiful. I'm in love with it.

At 8 months pregnant I knew that the days of having time to build furniture were quickly coming to a close, so I decided to just get to it. It required a LOT of lumber, so I went to a local lumberyard rather than Lowe's. Prcies were cheaper and it was easier to buy in the bulk I needed.

Long story short, it took me a week to build it and a lot of assistance from the hubs. We had to assemble it in our bedroom cause it's so dang huge. We'll have to sell it with the house cause there's no way it's coming out of there. But after about 20 hours of work, we have a beautiful Pottery Barn knock off! And it cost us about $160 in materials.


At the lumber yard

 What our garage looked like for a week

 Working on the antique white finish

 Mason made the job go so much faster!

 And this is what our room looked like for several days

 On a break

 FINALLY!!

The finished product. The nighstands are the matching Pottery Barn farmhouse style that we built, and the teal lamps were from a thrift store. One of my favorite finds ever! Our bedspread was brand new from Goodwill as well.
I swore after this project that I was done forever. But now that Miriam is a couple months old and things are settling into a routine, I have my eye on a certain dining room table plan that I might have to tackle in the next couple weeks!

No man is an island

We have the smallest kitchen in the world. I had dollhouses with more counter space than we have right now. The solution? A portable kitchen island. We ordered it online and waited anxiously for the day of arrival.

This is what we found waiting for us on the porch one day after work



















This is what was inside














These were the rocket scientist instructions














Two hours later it started to resemble something useful














After screwing on hinges, drawer tracks, and spice racks, it's done! And Pip approved.














Beautiful wonderful coveted counter space!!!














A whole dinner prepared on one counter top. All of my dreams have officially come true.