JP Strate - One-Day DIY: Beautiful Handmade Tables, Seating and More the Fast and Easy Way

ONE-DAY DIY

MODERN FARMHOUSE FURNITURE

Beautiful Handmade Tables, Seating and More the Fast and Easy WayJP STRATE & LIZ SPILLMANFounders ofTHE REHAB LIFE

JP: To my parents, the biggest influences in my life: Bernadette and John Liz: For Schmoopy

JP: To my parents, the biggest influences in my life: Bernadette and John Liz: For Schmoopy

Well, lucky for both of us, you have picked up the right book! We are JP and Liz of The Rehab Life. We started out as home remodelers who, along the way, began a YouTube channel showing viewers how to make their own furniture and home decor. We wrote this book to expand our vision of making DIY accessible to the average person. We do this with approachable one-day woodworking projectsyes, you really can make your own dining table in a day with limited tools and no prior experience! Dont worry if you dont have a dedicated craft room or your only reference for a biscuit is something you eat with gravy. We use simple woodworking techniques to guide you through projects for your entire home. We believe that anyone can build furniture! This is evidenced by the hundreds of messages we have received from people all over the world who went from never picking up a tool to building their own farmhouse table for their family.

These messages, and the feelings of happiness and pride that they convey, are what drive us to keep creating content for beginners. Its the same feeling that we hope you will have after working through the projects in this book. Aside from that amazing feeling of accomplishment, there are lots of reasons to go the DIY route when it comes to furnishing your home. DIY allows you to custom-build for your particular space, it guarantees that your pieces will be uniqueno more generic box store decorand drum roll, please its cheaper than buying! That last reason is what originally got us into DIY! We are home renovators by day and, as any realtor will tell you, a staged home sells faster than an empty one. Armed with this knowledge and a very limited budget, we decided to build a few simple pieces of furniture for staging. Well, it turns out that building your own furniture is pretty addicting! We now have enough furniture to stage multiple projects at a time and fill our own homes with DIY pieces.

Now we want to show everyone how fun and easy DIY can be. Over the next 6 chapters, we are going to build gorgeous modern farmhouse furniture. We love this design style for its clean lines and versatility and because its perfect for beginners. If youre ready to join in the fun, grab your tools and get ready, because the next time someone asks you where you got that cool bookcase or custom kitchen island, youre going to be able to say, I built it!

Okay, first things first! We know youre excited to get started, but take a quick look at the following info. It provides useful knowledge to help you on your DIY woodworking journey ahead.

Weve tried to keep the list as basic as possible, to make the projects affordable and easy to build. I mean, really, who wants to spend $400 on a specialty tool youll use once in your life? At that point, you might as well just buy the furniture! Even if you dont own a saw, many home improvement stores will cut the pieces for you. You probably have almost everything else laying around your house somewhere or have a friend that does! Brushes Circular saw Drill and drill bits Drop cloths Hairpin legs (these can be easily found online at very affordable prices!) Miter saw Pencil Rags Rubber gloves Safety glasses Sanding block or electric sander Screwdriver or impact driver Tape measure Trim-head screws (length depending on the project) Wood filler MDF board (medium-density fiberboarda versatile building material)

Its perfect, really. Speaking of perfect, youll want to keep your pieces in great shape for a long time. After all, you built them and you should be proud! Polyurethane will help protect your builds from spills, wineglass rings, pets basically life. You definitely want a can handy for your projects. You may even want to add additional coats of polyurethane to those high-traffic pieces, such as kitchen tables, towel bars and coffee tables, to provide an extra layer of protection.