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The first project I ever did was a small cedar box garden for my daughter with plans from Ana White. I had promised to make her a garden of some sort and figured it’d be an easy project. Considering how little I knew about working with wood, I’m surprised it even held together. But it did, and she has a nice area in the backyard now that she can plant in. As a matter of fact I recently built her an additional tiered box garden that she will use this year as well. Just to give you an idea of how much my building skills have improved, my first project took several hours over two afternoons (probably close to 10 hours for a two hour project. Boy did I suck). This new tiered garden took less than 60-minutes from start to finish. But, truth be told, after it took so long to build the box gardens for my daughter, I didn’t really have the drive to build anything again. While the finished product was nice, I was discouraged by how long it took and the problems that I faced in building it. The only reason I purchased tools in the first place was because I figured I could build our new patio table much cheaper than buying it. The box garden was the starter project I was supposed to breeze through before moving on to bigger and better things. Now, I simply figured I’d probably end up building a patio table at some point way down the line (i.e. never or just shortly before).

It wasn’t until I purchased a new bed a few months later that I got the bug to build again. My wife and I had a queen size bed on it’s last leg and we decided (well she decided, I just nodded my head and smiled as I often do) that a king size bed would be better. This new size bed would also require a rearrangement of the bedroom. With this rearrangement also spawned some ideas for furniture that we “needed”, starting with a nightstand for my side of the bed. While shopping for the bed, I also priced various nightstands and headboards. I quickly realized that the furniture I wanted I couldn’t afford and the furniture I could afford I didn’t want. “Well, I guess I’ve got those tools.”  I told myself. Immediately after the bed was delivered and set-up I hit the web looking for my future night stand. I searched around and eventually ended back at Ana White’s website, and after surfing through various ideas I found a brag post that I really liked (Thank you brag posts!). I printed off the plans and hit up Home Depot that weekend. Before I knew it I was knee deep in saw dust and actually making progress on a build; however, I knew nothing of lumber selection and found some of my 2×2 boards were “slightly” crooked. And when I say slightly, I mean I think they could make a pretty fun water slide based on their shape. I was smart enough to purchase a couple of extra, figuring I’d rather have them in the event I forget to measure twice, and was able to cut the pieces I needed from them, discarding 2/3 a board just to get a straight(ish) leg. Slowly but surely the night stand took shape and, while not perfect, ended up better than I could have anticipated. The idea that I took a few pieces of wood and transformed it in to something useful was inspiring and addictive. It was all the start of something bigger…