Most people think that DIY is always cheaper. It’s been my experience that the reverse is usually true. Almost all of the furniture I make costs double what I’d pay at a big box store. The same holds true for most of the clothes the wife makes at home. The only way DIY saves money is in bulk production. When you make a dozen or more of the same gift, the per-item cost is usually lower than anything you’d pay at a store.

We made a dozen of these chalkboards (click here to learn more):

And we made a dozen of these spice rub jars (click here to learn more):

I also made this guitar stand for my brother-in-law:

Oh, and the wife made this sock animal dinosaur for our youngest nephew. She got the pattern from a book called Stray Sock Sewing, Too: More Super-Cute Sock Softies To Make & Love.

And she made a bunch of these Christmas tree ornaments for family and friends. The pottery kiln can churn out cheap and easy gifts.

I should also mention that we buried a cat (Jasmine) over Thanksgiving and the wife didn’t want to look at my old cat food station for two anymore. So I made this smaller cat food station for Crew, the wife’s 12 year old cat who got grandfathered into our marriage:

As a way to cut down on the amount of money spent at Christmastime (and to limit the amount of useless crap we each accumulated), my family decided to start making gifts a few years ago. It was touch and go for a while, but thanks to creative online showcases like Pinterest, the quality of gifts has dramatically increased lately. This year, we made these chalkboards for some of the ladies on both sides of our families.

About a month ago, the wife saw this page in a magazine:

She pointed to the chalkboard and suggested that we make something similar for our homemade Christmas gifts. I’m not sure if she really liked this idea or just wanted to outsource most of the gift-making to me this year, but they came out great. The best part is that they were pretty cheap to make. The project only requires some basic carpentry skills and a little patience.

Here’s what you need:

• 2 1/4″ x 2′ x 4′ sheets of oak plywood ($32)
• 1 quart of tinted Zinsser primer ($13)
• 1 quart of chalkboard paint ($13.50)
• 150′ of rustic-looking rope (from Ace Hardware, $7)
• 1 ball of twine ($2.50)
• 12 pieces of chalk ($2)

Each sheet of plywood gets cut into six rectangles that measure 12 x 18 inches each. I used a table saw, but a hand-held circular saw would work just as well. I pre-primed the wood to speed the process along.

Next, I used my miter saw to cut some angles for decoration, and then ran a router around the top edge. You can omit this step, but it adds a nice touch. I routed a 45-degree angle on half of them and cut a simple quarter-round on the rest. Here’s a closer look.

Next, you drill two holes in each chalkboard. Make sure you drill through the board and into a piece of scrap wood or the back will splinter. I used a 5/8″ forstner bit because I wanted the holes to be big (and clean), but you could use a smaller-diameter twist bit if that’s all you have.

Finally, you prime the boards and then paint them with the chalkboard paint. I remembered to brand the back of each chalkboard.

Knot some rope through the holes and tie a piece of chalk to some twine and you’re done.

I was worried that the chalk would be hard to erase from the valleys in the grain of the wood, but it comes right off.

Cost breakdown: $60/12 = $5 per chalkboard.

You actually have enough paint to more than double the scope of the project. Even if you bought two of everything besides the paint, the per-unit price would drop to around $4. That means you would have two dozen go-to gifts in your closet that are good for any occasion. Plus, you don’t need to buy a card because you can write a greeting right on the gift. How easy is that?

This DIY guitar stand is nothing special, but I thought I’d blog it in case someone else wants to copy my design. Like my toolbox, it’s made entirely out of wood scraps and used hardware. I basically made a large version of a picture frame stand. I used a jigsaw to cut out the feet and glued them to the back pieces. Once the glue dried, I tied the pieces together with some thin-head screws.

I used an old hinge to lock the two pieces together and cut a spare paint paddle to serve as the locking mechanism. This way, the stand will collapse and lay flat if I need to put it up or travel with it.

If there’s a benefit to being married to a woman who has plastic bins filled with fabric tucked away everywhere, it’s that I was able to cut some black velvet to pad the areas of the stand that will touch the guitar.

Here’s how it turned out. If no one’s coming over to our tiny house, I’m just going to leave this thing in the den. I figure the only way I’ll get good at it is by playing when I’m watching TV anyway, so I might as well just leave it there.

UPDATE: While the velvet looked great, it didn’t grip the guitar as tightly as I’d like. I had to set it exactly upright or else gravity would slowly pull the neck to one side. I went out to the garage and opened my old bicycle toolbox for the first time in a few years. I did a stint as a bike mechanic back in my college days. I used to wrap strips of tire tube rubber around my mountain bike frame to protect the paint job from the chain during stressful riding. I cut some new strips out of an old tube and used carpet tacks to adhere them to the guitar stand where the velvet had been.

Now when I set the guitar in the stand, it’s secure and the finish is protected.

1. Cut out a shelf to hold my wife’s sewing supplies
2. Rebuild the wheel mounts for the driveway gate
3. Build a new magazine holder for the bathroom

It just doesn’t feel like a weekend unless I paint something white.

Here are the pieces for the magazine holder. It’s the leftover plywood from the kitchen island:

I really didn’t feel like spending a loot of time on this piece, so I decided not to add any molding. A trick I use to make plywood look more like finished lumber is to smear drywall mud into the cut sides and along the seams. It usually hides the imperfections well enough:

The other items you see here are the shelf for my wife’s sewing supplies and the wheel mounts for the gate:

The shelf is made from the plywood I had left over after making the rolling pantry for the kitchen. In order to make it match the rest of the shelves in the guest bedroom bookcases, I had to rout out a curve on the front edge. It looks pretty good:

And after my last wheel mounts fell off the gate, I decided to make this new set out of oak and buy wheels that are flat-mounted to the bottom:

These should last a while. I hope the new, white paint fades pretty quickly or else I’ll have to pressure wash the entire gate.

The magazine holder was a pain. I should have painted the pieces before I assembled it, but I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. I got paint all over myself trying to get the roller and the brush into all of the cracks and crevasses inside the box. But in the end, it came out great:

I gave myself the arbitrary deadline of before football season to finish the work. It seems I barely beat the bell, considering that the college football season kicks off tonight.

My wife surprised me with a new TV for the kitchen — just in time for football:

And about a month ago, I managed to build this organizer for the inside of the washer/dryer closet door. It holds the detergent, paper towels, cat food, etc…

I had to go through countless boards at the store until I found enough pieces that were perfectly straight. I was afraid that even the slightest warpage would cause the door to come out of square. I also used some scrap plywood to add a shelf above the washer/dryer units. Since the space is over three feet deep, it’ll hold a considerable amount of stuff.

And I’m pleased to say I finally finished the movable island:

No store I visited (and I visited them all) carried no-mortise hinges in an oil-rubbed bronze finish, so I had to order them online. It took a couple of weeks for them to arrive, and I installed the cabinet doors last night. It holds all of our large pots as well as some heavy appliances:

It’s really working out great. I’ve walked into the kitchen a couple of times to find my wife rolling out dough on the island while sitting on a stool and watching TV. As a matter of fact, I used it just the other night to bread some veal.

With all the pots and pans out of the cabinets, we finally got around to organizing them. I hate having cords dangling all over the pace, so I installed our electric can opener beneath a shelf inside the cabinet. I also used some scrap wood to make a bin for our garlic, shallots and onions:

Enough about the little stuff. Here’s how the finished room looks:

It’s great to have everything done, but I must admit that I feel a little useless.

On to the next project, I guess…

The building materials set me back about $300. To put this in context, I could have made this thing for about $150 if I used knotty pine, and maybe $200 if I used select pine.

This was relatively expensive because it’s all red oak and aspen. But in the end, I’ll have a matching pot rack and island that will (hopefully) stay in the family for generations. That’s a small price to pay for an heirloom set.

The island is somewhat adapted from my original coffee table design. To minimize the use of screw holes and wood filler, I had to rely on glue to hold the sides together:

The glue is effective because I routed out channels for the oak plywood. The plywood gives the frame strength and stability, and it also keeps everything square:

This is the most precision job I’ve ever attempted. My amateurism showed through in a couple of instances. I got so frustrated with it last Sunday that I quit halfway through just to clear my head. After work on Monday, my wife helped me fasten the cross beams and glue the backboard into place:

It was at this point that I realized I had made an error. I somehow forgot to subtract the height of the wheels in my design even though I seemingly accounted for them. (See the 34 1/4″ body height in the design. It should have been 30 1/4″) As a result, the island was shaping up to sit about 40″ high, instead of the commonly-accepted 36″ counter height. After resisting the overwhelming urge to take a sledge hammer to the piece, I figured out how to rework the base to get it closer to counter height. It’ll still be higher than 36″, but just by a little bit.

I didn’t get a chance to work on it again until Wednesday. Over the next few evenings, I assembled the cabinet doors, finished the framing and installed the shelving:

I ended up working on this thing all day Saturday as well. In order to give the table-top depth, I added a 1″ x 3″ frame beneath the Aspen butcher board. They didn’t fit exactly right, so I had to sand them until my wrist almost fell off. Eventually, I got the seam smooth and even. My wife suggested that we add another shelf inside the island to hold smaller pots and pans, so I made one out of some scrap oak plywood.

Once the body of the piece was largely assembled, I dry-fitted everything. I must admit I wasn’t completely surprised that my doors didn’t nest very well. I’ve never been good at making doors. In the past, this would have been disastrous, as I undoubtedly would have messed up the edges even worse by trying to trim everything freehand with a circular saw. But now that I have my table saw, I can just adjust the blade to shave 1/8″ off the sides and bottoms. I also decided that I wanted towel racks on either side of the piece to make it more functional. The idea was to cut the dowel mounts out of red oak and use aspen for the rod, thereby maintaining the two-tone effect. It took me a long time, but I eventually cut out four mounting pieces with perfectly round edges:

Here’s what it looked like with the aspen dowel inserted:

Sadly, I had to scrap this idea. Literally. Since I don’t have a drill press, I can’t get the holes exactly plum. That means the rod isn’t square, and the piece won’t sit right against the island. So I put the towel racks in the kindling pile for when winter rolls around.

I wanted to get some stain on it so it could dry overnight. I stained the inside first, and then worked my way to the outside. While the body of the island was drying, I stained the faux butcher block piece. I hung the cabinet doors and used a box fan to speed up the drying process: (pardon the mess)

Late Saturday night, I installed 2″ wheels so we can roll the island around the kitchen. I remembered to brand it:

I got out to the garage really early on Sunday to finish the kitchen island. I was also smoking a pork shoulder, so I had to get the grill fired up anyway. I used liquid nails to glue the table-top to the island body, and I cut out and spray-painted the sheet metal that will decorate the cabinet doors:

Once the paint dried, I weighed them down in the routed channel and used clear-drying caulk to set them in place. While the caulk dried, I put a clear coat on the entire island. I only used one coat on the body, since I didn’t want it to shine too much, but I put about seven thin coats on the table-top. To get the right texture and protective properties, you have to apply a clear coat, let it dry, gently sand it with 220 grit (or higher) sandpaper, wipe off the dust, and repeat the process over and over again.

I ordered some oil-rubbed bronze hinges online and installed a flip-down down door to hide our cast iron pans (the original non-stick cookware) that are too heavy to hang from the pot rack. It holds all of our large and small pots, as well as the blender and mixer. That freed up a lot of cabinet space.

It looks great with the pot rack, doesn’t it? As you can see, it’s only 1/2″ higher than the rest of the counter tops:

You can’t even tell it’s on wheels. This might be my favorite piece of furniture so far. Except for my bar, of course.

Seriously, how cool would something like this look on your back porch?

Using the sink as a drink basin is so obvious that I feel stupid for not coming up with this myself. What’s more embarrassing is the fact that this kind of outdoor drink station was the general idea behind the bar I made a few years ago.

There really aren’t that many products out there (beyond galvanized steel buckets) that fill this niche, and the ones that do are overpriced. For example, guess how much Frontgate is selling this plastic thing for:

$1500. Can you believe that? You’d think for that amount of money, you’d at least get something made out of teak, rosewood or some other exotic hardwood.

I could have made something better than this for about $100, and that would include some cabinet space, a drainage spigot, and a hinged tabletop that would allow the station to serve double-duty as a cocktail table. Kind of like this:

I officially have an itch to build this thing, only now I’ll have to buy a used sink on Craigslist or at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. I still have to make the island for the kitchen, but this will be my next project after that. The upside about this piece is that I can use up some scrap wood and paint it whatever color I want. I think I might stain the table top and the surface area around the sink the color of espresso beans, and then paint the rest of the piece a pale blue color. Maybe.

The pantry space is over three feet deep. We figured there was no reason to install such deep shelves, as we wouldn’t be able to reach anything in the back. And we couldn’t treat it like a walk-in pantry with shallow shelves, because the space is only two feet wide. My wife balked at the idea of putting in a false backing, since we’d essentially be throwing away good storage space in an otherwise small room. She recommended that we put shelves in the back for things we seldom use (specialty appliances and seasonal china), and build a movable pantry to maximize the volume of the space. This solution is actually closer to her original design, except that the pantry moves on wheels instead of on expensive, heavy-duty slide rails.

I bought some cabinet-grade birch plywood for the unit. The stuff costs $50 for each 4′ x 8′ sheet, but it’s worth it. Here’s a shot of the basic framework:

Here’s the finished product. The unit is about 16″ wide, 24″ deep and over 6′ tall. It’ll hold a lot more than you’d think:

At least I thought I was finished at this point. I built this on Friday a couple of weeks ago and left town the following Saturday. On the drive back home on Sunday, I realized that I hadn’t accounted for the cabinet door when I measured for the width of the opening. As a result, I had to take the whole thing apart, cut two inches off every shelf, and put it all back together. I didn’t really mind, as it gave me a chance to play with my new (to me) table saw.

This past weekend, my wife painted all the trim work and the pantry shelves. This shows just how much storage space we really have:

Here you can see how well the rolling pantry nests in the cabinet space:

Next, I went to work on the faux cabinet doors. Making the doors would have been easy if all I had to do was measure and cut the plywood, but it’s safe to say there’s not a single wall in our house that’s plumb. As a result, every angle had to be considered, and steps had to be taken to minimize the visual impact of gaps and panels that are asymmetrical. After a lot of measurements and re-cuts, I finally got the plywood hung:

I decided to use piano hinges. The doors are pretty heavy, and nothing distributes weight better than a floor-to-ceiling hinge. Plus, you won’t be able to see it after we paint, making the panels look less like giant doors and more like individual cabinets.

Next, the finish work began. We wanted the whole cabinet set-up to blend the modernity of our kitchen with the old charm of the rest of the house. To get that effect, we used bead board in our false cabinet doors. It’s a pain because you have to rout out a channel in all of the 1″ x 3″ trim pieces and make sure the beads run straight even though the cabinet doors aren’t exactly square. After many hours of work, I got it done:

Word to the wise: after years of working with bead board, I’ve learned that you must pre-prime (or pre-stain) the wood before you start building. The best way to do it is to slop on lots of primer with the thickest roller you have. That’ll get the paint into all the crevasses without taking all afternoon. If you wait to paint until after your piece is assembled, you’ll never get the color into the beading where the plywood meets the trim.

As a reminder, this is what my wife originally planned for the rear of the room:

Here’s how it turned out in the end:

Pretty close, right? We had to nix the idea of a sliding pantry with a false front, but I think it came out okay in the end. The rolling pantry and hidden shelves are very functional, and the white cabinets brightened up the room. It’s really good-looking when viewed from the dining room, where the custom kitchen cabinet area is framed by the built-in dining room cabinets:

It’s hard to believe that the our remodel is finally finished. Granted, we still have some little things to do in the room (build an island on wheels to rest beneath the matching pot rack, add shelves to the rear of the washer/dryer cabinet door to hold various sundries, and put a flat screen tv above the fridge), but that’s all cosmetic work. We started this project with the intent of taking the biggest drawback to our house’s value and making it the biggest selling feature. I think we accomplished that, and on a relatively small budget.

To compare and contrast, here are some Before & After pictures:

If you haven’t been following along throughout this series of posts, you can start at the beginning: Kitchen Remodel 1: The Plan

UPDATE: Kitchen Remodel 11: Really Finished

It came out okay, but it would look better if the mangy animals didn’t spill their half-chewed food all over it.

I already had these decorative L-brackets that match our aged bronze hardware, and I was determined to work them into the design:

I think my mother bought these at a garage sale and gave them to me as a Christmas gift. They’re wrought iron and a little rusty, which I think makes them look better now than when they were new. If you’re planning to make something similar, I highly recommend buying brackets with some character. Amazon has a nice selection, and they’re not as expensive as you might expect.

I bought some oak at the hardware store and this ‘Union Jack’ style sheet metal for the backing:

I cut the sheet metal with some snips and spray painted it with a faux-metal color that matches the L-brackets. Next, I cut all the pieces to size and glued the joints before inserting screws:

Once the piece was sturdy, I routed out a channel for the sheet metal backing and used clear-drying caulk to hold the sheet metal in place. That was on Thursday, and I couldn’t get back to this project until Sunday. Since I had a lot to get done, I threw myself back into this project at dawn.

One problem with intricate pieces like this is that you have to put it together in just the right order. This has to be glued before that can be screwed, and that has to be stained before those things can be added. For this project, the dowels and under-mount bracing had to be stained first:

When staining different parts of the same piece at different times, you have to be very careful not to get any excess on the virgin side or it’ll look dark and smudgy when you finish the entire piece. Here’s a view of the under-side of the pot rack, which had to be stained before all the pieces could be attached:

That color looks great, right? I wanted it to be similar to the finish on our cherry cabinets, but I went with a Red Mahogany stain instead. Finally I attached the rest of the pieces and stained the whole thing. They say you’re supposed to let it dry for about eight hours before putting on a clear-coat. I was determined to get it in the kitchen last night, so I sped up the drying process:

I remembered to brand it:

I bought some copper pot rack hooks online last week. They help tie in the pot rack with the rest of the hardware in the kitchen. Here’s how it all looks:

Now we just need to make a matching island on wheels to rest beneath it.

This was actually a very easy build. The only problems I ran into resulted from my miter saw not being properly calibrated. The angles aren’t perfect, but they’re good enough for me.

I might try staining more of the pieces I build. I’ve been using paint as a crutch for a long time. Painting means I can rely on wood filler to cover over all of my screw holes and mistakes, but this project inspired some confidence that I might be getting better at doing it right the first time. Also, I’ve discovered that paying more for good wood and using a dark stain makes all the difference in the world. There’s a fine line between good-looking homemade furniture and cheap-looking thrift store furniture, and that line is money. If you start with good materials, then you’re halfway to a good result.

UPDATE: Click here to see the homemade Kitchen Island. And click here to see how the Pot Rack & Island look in the finished kitchen.