This week’s post is for my fellow and future DIY newcomers! I’m sharing the best tools and tips to make your first plywood DIY a success!

For this week of the Boho Cottage Bedroom makeover, I spent my time constructing the King-sized bed out of 3 sheets of plywood. If you missed the “glue doodles” and endless mistakes on stories, I’ve got you covered. Just check out the new Midmod King Bed Highlight on my Instagram profile. I’ll be updating it with more additions next week as I finish out the bed!

This was my first time building furniture and I wasn’t familiar with the materials or tools beforehand, so I made a lot of mistakes along the way. Fortunately, nothing went wrong that couldn’t be solved with some sand paper, a tool adjustment, or reorganizing my cuts. In case you’re considering doing a plywood-based project of your own, I highly recommend it! Honestly this project has been so much more fun and easy than I thought it would be. I’ve already got some ideas for original projects using plywood and after this week working with the tools, I’m feeling confident enough to give them a shot when this challenge wraps up. Today I’m sharing the tools I’ve been using and the complete-newcomer knowledge of plywood that I gathered before starting this project.

As I shared before, I’m following these plans from Shara Woodshop Diaries to build my bed, and having a step-by-step guide has made it so much easier to just jump in and focus on getting comfortable with the tools and skills instead of sweating over measurements and diagrams I drew on scraps of notebook paper. She has a lot of plans on her site for $5 or less if you’re looking for plans, but if you’re more comfortable with woodworking, there’s plenty of detail in the blog posts and youtube videos so you may not need the cut lists and plywood breakdown diagrams she provides in the guides.

(Post Under Construction, Check back in a few hours!)

What is plywood?

Is all plywood the same?

hardness/ variety

grade

How to transport plywood (without roof racks!)

How to join pieces of plywood

Tools

• sheet gripper
• rip cut
• circular saw
• edge banding
• mini heat press
• blade for edge banding
• wood screws
• pocket hole screws
• pocket hole jig
• work gloves
• steel-toes boots
• random orbital sander
• 180 and 220 grit sandpaper
• sandpaper eraser
• eye glasses, lung protection, shop vac or leaf blower
• plywood scrap
• impact driver
• wood glue
• pocket hole jig