Knock-off Wood

Awhile back my friend, Mindy, told me about Knock-Off Wood (now called Ana-White.com). It's a site that gives all kinds of plans for building furniture. If you haven't yet seen this site, get ready to be hooked. With knock-offs of popular stores like Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, and West Elm, you'll soon have a long list of projects. At a HUGE discount.

We've built two knock-offs so far, and have a list of things we'd still like to make.

The first piece of furniture we made was this bookshelf, from the Bedford Collection at Pottery Barn.

We made THREE of the bookshelves, stacking two of them to make a bigger shelf. The purpose was to house all of our homeschooling supplies and it's been great. We're able to store books, craft supplies, games, paper, files of the boys' work, puppets, and my yarn for crocheting.

All three of the shelves- hardware and everything- cost us $500. At Pottery Barn, just ONE of the simple bookshelves, without drawers, will cost you $419. On SALE! And the one with drawers is $500. BIG SAVINGS. We saved about $1000! We LOVE to save $.

The next project we did was the Stratton Storage bed by Pottery Barn. We have a queen bed and this cost us $170 for the wood and screws. We happened to already have a gallon of paint leftover from a past project, so that didn't cost us a dime. Once again, the queen Stratton bed without baskets, is $1000, so that's $840 in savings!

Then we found milk crate baskets from Target for $20 each. They weren't the size we wanted, so we had to use two per cubby hole (that's 12 at $20). So add another $240 and the grand total is $410 as opposed to the 1300 we would've spent on the bed and baskets at PB!

So, if you've had your eye on a beautiful piece of furniture, but just can't shell out the money, take a look at the site. If the item you want to make isn't already on there, send her an email and see if she can work up some plans for the item you want to build. Good Luck!

Find plans for our projects here (bookshelves) and here (bed). She also has plans for king-size, twin, daybed, drawers, headboards, etc.