Creating DIY furniture for your home can save big money when it comes to your household budget. But even more, it really adds a unique, one-of-a-kind look to your space.
The shiplap vanity built for the bathroom
One of the most exciting and rewarding aspects of building our Simple House at the farm has been the ability to create special pieces of furniture that fit our vision for the home. Pieces we wouldn’t be able to find in stores – or that might break the bank if we did.
In many cases, we have been able to combine a few inexpensive stock purchases with a custom DIY piece to a special look.
Here are three of our favorites we have built for the house so far:
The Wine Rack
What do you get when you combine a couple of stock cabinets, a slab of cherry wood and diy bottle ladder racks? A custom wine rack!
The wine rack is a true combination of semi-homemade creativity.
We created the bottle ladder racks from leftover shiplap wood, and then attached them between the two stock cabinets to form the base.
The custom wine rack – one of our favorite pieces of diy furniture
For the top, we found a beautiful slab of live edge cherry at a local sawmill. All in all, I think it is our favorite homemade piece of DIY furniture in the house so far.
One huge benefit of building it ourselves was being able to fit it exactly to the space. I imagine that it would have been hard to find a wine rack that measured 88 3/8 inches long. But by building it ourselves, we could make it to the exact length we needed.
Shiplap Vanity Cabinet
For the bathroom, we once again used a custom piece to spruce up a couple of stock vanity cabinets. Our DIY bathroom vanity cabinet separates the space between the two sinks, and provides much needed storage.
The Shiplap Kitchen Island
To build, we started by creating a frame with 2 x 4 lumber. Next, we covered the exterior with rough-sawn shiplap, and finished off by installing a couple of shelves and a few doors made from shiplap. A little matching grey paint to the cabinet brought the three pieces together for a one-of-a-kind-look.
Kitchen Island
I think both of us nearly fainted when we saw the price of purchasing a custom kitchen island. Once we regained conciousness, we decided to build it ourselves.
Building the island allowed us to make it once again fit the space we had perfectly. Using 2 x 4’s and shiplap – we created the island to have four big shelves underneath for storing pots and pans. Adding a top that matched the rest of the kitchen brought it all together. Total cost to build the island base – about $100.00! Shiplap Rules! (See: Using Shiplap)
We still have a few DIY funiture projects to go to complete the house. At least it will keep us busy through the long, cold, non-gardening months of wintertime!
Happy DIY Furniture Building! – Jim and Mary. To receive our Recipes, DIY and Gardening articles each week, sign up to follow the blog via email in the right hand column above, “Like” us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter. You can also check out our new book, Growing Simple, now available on Amazon.com.