My wife is passionate about reading and she wanted a bookcase, which also brought up the need for a table and so on; I found myself really needing some free woodworking plans.

As a student of Latin and ancient Rome, and a great follower of classic English literature, she has collected more books than we could possibly shelve in the current state of things. As such, one day she came to me with a grin and said in a tone that was unmistakably a command that she would like me to build her a new set of bookcases—not just a book case, but three—that matched, were well made and that wouldn’t be too expensive.

I had a difficult challenge on my hands. As a woodworking fan, I am no stranger to a table saw or router, but I wanted to make it easy on myself because the project needed to be finished as soon as yesterday, as company was due in short order. I decided to start looking for a free woodworking plan to meet the budget and just make it fast.

As I looked online for help, the first place I found was a great site that had various options for coffee tables and end tables that have fantastic etched glass/mirrors at www.WoodworkingProjectsAndPlans.com. I located other sites that had book cases and similar projects.

After constructing the bookcases, my wife decided that she needed an end table made of the same wood that the book cases were made from. I received free plans from the site above and made the end table. I also had them create a beautiful glass etching of a whitetail deer that fit the new furnishings very well. The end table inevitably turned out very well.

Because of this success, I was commissioned to build one more item, an entertainment center for the large flat-panel TV we had recently purchased. I found another site with a free woodworking plan that had an easy to build entertainment unit. This was a fairly simple plan that didn’t have a lot of hard-to-do embellishments, but it met our needs of a simple, well-designed unit that would last for ages to come.

With each of these three projects, the planning resources were easily attainable online and were generally easy to follow. They plans listed all the tools and materials needed for each job. I did run into a problem when I didn’t follow the plans word for word and cut a piece too short. I lost a lot of time in running back and forth to the hardware store to replace the wood. Other than that I was very glad to find these free plans so I wouldn’t have to expend the brain power to make designs myself, or worse, to have to spend all my money on them.

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