I have been busy working down Bethany’s “honey-do” list since we moved into our new home. There were quite a few woodworking projects on the list, including building a long farmhouse dining room table for our large family. When I sat down to start drawing up the plans I asked her to provide me with pictures of tables similar to what she had in mind. Bethany only provided me with one example, a picture from Chip and Joanna Gaines’ website:
The Chip and Joanna Gaines table that provided the inspiration for our design.
The table was made for a couple with 7 children (Allen and Gail Holt) on an episode titled “Fixer Upper: Yours, Mine, Ours, and a Home on the River”. It was built by Clint Harp with Harp Design Co. and met Bethany’s design guidelines of simple, rugged, and LARGE.
As many of you know from our “Designing Kitchen and Cabinet Layouts” post, our whole house was designed around Bethany’s dream kitchen. While we made every effort to save money on other areas of the house, we were much less frugal when it came to the kitchen. Because we are so thrilled with both the aesthetic and functional results, I wanted to take the time to share pictures and explain in detail why Bethany loves her dream kitchen design so much!
This kitchen design is not one that happened by accident. Bethany slaved over the design for many months and mocked up every version and every detail using Home Designer Architectural software. Here is a screenshot Bethany took using the software and then what the kitchen looks like now in real life:
Picture showing Bethany’s dream kitchen design in Chief Architect’s Home Design software and then the final real life kitchen – it’s AMAZING how similar they look!
I passed! I have been putting off getting my Project Management Professional (PMP) certification for years and finally decided this was the year to get it done! The company I work for is strongly encouraging employees to get this certification and they recently sent me to a PMP Bootcamp. I thought the PMP Bootcamp was good but I left feeling like I had a lot of gaps in my knowledge. I ended up doing three basic things to prepare for and pass the PMP exam: Continue reading PMP Mindmap for PMBOK 5th Edition→
I never thought I would be writing a post about a woodworking project but I am so excited to be enjoying this new hobby! I have always had a desire to learn woodworking but it seemed too hard and I had no foundation of experiences to build from. I built a dog house years ago but it was pretty simple and turned out sloppy.
Haven painting the dog house
I am also extremely busy with my growing family and a demanding career so I assumed if I ever got around to woodworking it would be during my retirement years.
So what changed? Well, for my birthday my wife gave me a Kreg Jig. I didn’t even know what it was and when Bethany explained what she wanted me to do with it I felt intimidated and under qualified. She showed me a table on Ana White’s website and explained that if I could build that table we could save thousands of dollars compared to a similar table she was considering purchasing at Restoration Hardware. That got my interest. Continue reading Ana White 4×4 Farmhouse Truss Beam Table→
