Written by: Renee Reiter

Oh Home Depot….I am not sure if I am mad or glad now that this project is over. I remember the day clearly…I was innocently scrolling Instagram and saw a post from Home Depot with this gorgeous picture below and a caption encouraging me to sign up for a class to learn how to make one. I immediately texted a friend who I know loves Christmas and made plans to attend the DIY class. 

**WARNING: LONG POST. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE THE FINISHED PROJECT IT’S AT THE BOTTOM 🙂 **

I was a little intimidated when I saw the class was 90 min long but then I assumed we would be building one in class. I knew I would never make it through a 90 min DIY class that was instructional only and no actual building so I called my Home Depot and asked if we would be building our own to walk out with and take home when class was over and did I need to come early to purchase my supplies. I was told we would be building one that we could take home and no I didn’t need to come early. Perfect! Or so I thought…

Turns out my initial fears were correct and it was instructional only. After 20 mins of talking about wearing gloves during the project I was bored and out. I still have no clue whats so ever as so why they guy I spoke with told me I could build one that night! (LIE #1) Heads up I found several “lies” I am calling them in the HD instructions for this.

I was still determined to do the project though and had never really tackled something this difficult. I don’t usually work with wood but I will mention that Home Depot says this is an easy beginner project that takes less than 2 hours. It took me much longer haha

Here is the link to Home Depot instructions and supply list for this project. They say the project can be done for $30 and that isn’t quite true (LIE #2) unless you happen to have the wood lying around (which I did not). In total I spent more like $60-$70 on this project.

Okay lets build this sucker! I cut the wood as they specified (chart below)

Since I was going to do my stripes in a different color I had to let the whole project dry overnight and then tape and do my stripes. At this point I wasn’t super thrilled with my color choices but I wasn’t about to change it now haha.