Thanks to creative ideas, extensive professional equipment for hobbyists, and modern materials, you can also build wooden furniture yourself with a little skill. We give you ten tips on how to make your DIY project a success.
Building wooden furniture yourself is no longer reserved for trained carpenters and craftsmen. Thanks to creative ideas, extensive professional equipment for hobbyists and modern materials, you can implement your ideas in this area entirely on your own with a little skill. We give you ten tips on how to make your DIY project a success.
Wood is a material that invites passionate hobbyists and craftsmen to experiment and build.
In addition to the countless design variations, the various functional properties of this material ensure that wood never goes out of style. Wood is particularly valuable for a healthy indoor climate and a natural feeling of living. Above all, thanks to its moisture-regulating properties, it can help improve the air quality in the living area.
Wood is also a material that invites passionate hobbyists and craftsmen to experiment and build. To successfully implement your wooden furniture project, we have put together the first steps and various ideas.
10 TIPS FOR DIY WOODEN FURNITURE
1. Materials for building your own wooden furniture
If you want to build wooden furniture yourself, of course, next to the idea for the piece of furniture, the question of the material comes first. To make the right choice, not just a few knowledge of the different types of wood are helpful. In addition to solid wood, there are also many other materials that you can use to creatively and inexpensively produce wooden furniture yourself.
The most common materials in wooden furniture construction include:
- Frame, panels, and slats made of solid wood
- Chipboard (wood chips glued together under pressure)
- OSB panels (special chipboard made of several layers of long chips)
- MDF panels (MDF = medium density fiber)
- Plywood (consisting of several glued layers of wood)
All of these materials have different fields of application. Laths and frames are particularly suitable for substructures, OSB panels are often used for load-bearing parts, MDF and chipboard for surfaces. One of the main features of plywood is that it hardly warps.
As for the most common types of solid wood for DIY furniture construction, birch and spruce stand out as favorites. The light and softwood are particularly suited to the needs of hobby furniture makers in terms of appearance and processing properties.
2. Find instructions for making furniture
For the production of a piece of furniture on your own, you need suitable instructions as a basis. If you have talents in technical drawing, you can, of course, plan your project with your own resources.
For the majority of hobby furniture makers, however, this should not be the case. Instead, you will find valuable help and instructions in numerous online forums and DIY portals as well as in specialist books. Hardware stores often also provide such instructions for making furniture. Some of these markets even offer courses in wooden furniture construction every now and then – as do many adult education centers and some craft businesses.
3. Suitable tools and equipment to build wooden furniture yourself
Of course, you shouldn’t start building wooden furniture without having the right equipment. This includes at least one jigsaw, sanding machine and sandpaper with different degrees of sanding, hammer, drill, cordless screwdriver, tape measure, spirit level, nails, screws, and wood glue. You should also have a soft pencil ready for marking.
4. Use Euro pallets creatively
Euro pallets are currently setting a real trend in the DIY wooden furniture sector. When these have had their day in retail, they often find a second life in creative projects for modern interior designs. The good thing about building wooden furniture yourself from Euro pallets: the basic construction for a lot of furniture is already in place.
For example, it is very easy to use complete pallets as a simple but effective substructure for your small sofa on the balcony or terrace. The Euro pallets are simply sanded down, prepared a little – and covered with mattresses and pillows.
The pallets can also be prepared as individually designed shelves, garden furniture, or as a low coffee table. You can find ideas in abundance on the web.
By the way: Today, you no longer need to have relationships with retailers to get hold of Euro pallets. The versatile workpieces can also be found in many hardware stores or in the timber trade.
5. Fruit boxes as wooden furniture
You can also fill old wooden boxes with new life as pieces of furniture in a DIY fashion. Whether wine or fruit boxes: the transport containers are usually characterized by good wood quality and stable workmanship. From side table to shelf, from DIY chest to indoor garden, furnishing ideas of all kinds can be implemented.
6. Upcycling: Thinking ahead creatively with standard wooden furniture
So-called upcycling is also a great way to let your creativity run free with DIY wooden furniture. This means the creative processing of standard furniture. Shelves, bed frames and cupboards from IKEA, in particular, are very popular for upcycling in the DIY community – after all, they are generally delivered in individual parts. You can then either build the furniture partially according to the construction plan and only change small details. Or you see the individual parts as a basis – and design your very own, individual piece of furniture from the available material.
7. Consciously use wood in its natural form
Little effort is required to bring some nature into the home with wooden workpieces. Why not, for example, simply name a piece of the wide log as a side table or nail two wooden slats to the wall and use them as a creative photo base?
8. Small projects to get you started
To get started with DIY furniture construction, we recommend simple projects that you will quickly see successes on. These include, for example, small shelves or side tables. You should tackle more complex projects such as cupboards, chests of drawers, or tables when you have already gained some experience in woodworking.
9. Colors for self-made wooden furniture
With special wood paints and glazes, you can give self-made furniture a coat of paint that matches your interior design style. Natural colors are also trendy – but you should still treat the surfaces with protective coatings.
10. Courage to mix materials
By the way, modern DIY wooden furniture doesn’t have to be made entirely of wood. The natural material also looks particularly attractive in combination with other materials – for example, with concrete or plastic. An impressively simple entry-level project would be the following stool, for example: Pour some concrete into a bucket, insert three thick wooden sticks of the same length as supports – and after the concrete has dried out, stand the whole thing on its feet.
