I’ve recently decided, after several years at another hosting provider, to move this website to Bluehost.  I’ve hosted a number of websites at Bluehost for various purposes, but just never got around to actually moving my personal blog until now.  This post will walk you through the 4 steps to move your site!

Just a note about Bluehost.  I’ve personally used several webhosting companies and all the reputable ones are pretty good.  But Bluehost is definitely my preferred hosting provider on the basis of price and how easy they make it to set up a new site.  In addition, I’ve always had good technical support when a problem has come up, which to me is a lot more important than just getting the cheapest price.  I will also freely disclose that I do have an affiliate relationship with Bluehost, so if (and only if) you find my tutorial helpful and want to sign up for a Bluehost account, please consider using one of the links found here.

You can also use this same process to move to any hosting provider, just keep in mind that the hosting tools may look a little different than the images below.

On to the process… First, while it’s not hard, you do have to pay attention to the details.  Second, there are a handful of moving parts to a project like this, but if you’ll follow my instructions, it’s really not as intimidating as it may seem.

For starters, here’s a general overview of the steps that we’ll take.  We’ll get into the details below

Overview of the Process

Step 1 – Copy your website and Export your MySQL database

Step 2 – Set up your domain on Bluehost

Step 3 – Upload your website to Bluehost, create a database and import your .sql file.

Step 4 – Edit your configuration files and change the Nameservers.

You’ll need a few things before you get started (in addition to some coffee & some patience):

• A Bluehost account (this is sort of a given, but someone’s going to ask…)
• An FTP program such as Filezilla
• Access to your existing hosting account.
• Access to your domain registrar.  If you bought your domain through your original hosting provider, that’s fine.
• An HTML editor.  In this post, I’m using Dreamweaver, but it’s an expensive program and there are plenty of cheap and free options out there, such as Komodo Edit (for Mac) or Notepad++ (for Windows).

So… let’s get started!

Step 1 – Copy your website and Export your MySQL database

If you’re used to working with an FTP program, this part is easy.  Just establish a connection with your current hosting provider, navigate to the folder containing your site files and copy everything down to a place on your local computer.  I like to create a folder on my desktop and use that so I have all my files together.  This will also create a backup of your site that you can use to restore your site if anything gets messed up.  Depending on your internet connection, this may take a while.

Not in the habit of making site backups?  Assuming that your hosting provider is doing that for you?  Don’t.  Make regular backups of your website!  With most hosting providers, you can ask their support and they will make a compressed backup for you.

Exporting the MySQL database has a little more to it, but hang with me… it’s not that hard.

From the admin panel or cPanel of your existing hosting provider, find the database tools area.  You should have an icon for accessing the MySQL databases and another icon for phpMyAdmin.

Here’s the admin panel from my original hosting provider.  In the databases section you can see MySQL Server, phpMyAdmin and other tools.

You’ll start with with the MySQL database area.  This will give you a list of all the databases on your account (if you have more than one).  If you have several, you’ll need to make sure you pick the right one for your site.  Below, I have a number of databases and the login icon to the right will launch phpMyAdmin.

In this example, I have a number of databases to pick from.

If you don’t know the name of your database (assuming you have several and they have generic names), finding it is easy.  You simply need to use your FTP client to find the wp-config.php file on your site, open it and you will see the database name, the database user name and the user password.

Above is the wp-config.php file for my original hosting provider. Here you can see all of the necessary information: database name, db user, db user password and host name.

Using either a link to launch phpMyAdmin or go to the phpMyAdmin icon on the cPanel.  You may need to login to phpMyAdmin and then select the appropriate database or you may be able to launch phpMyAdmin directly from your database setup link on your hosting provider.  They’re all a little different.  Here’s an example of what it may look like:

phpMyAdmin with the database selected.

Here’s where you can see all of the tables in the database.  This is the guts of your website and all of the data in your WordPress site is here, so be careful.  Just follow the steps and don’t do anything crazy.

Select the database on the left side so that all tables are highlighted (see the left side drop down list in the image below).  Then find and select the Export button on the top navigation bar.  You’ll get something that looks like this:

phpMyAdmin Export Utility

Unless you are doing something advanced (and you’re probably not reading this post if you know how to do that), leave the default options as they are and select “go.”  You will begin downloading the SQL file.  Depending on the size of your database, this may take a little while and the file will (most likely) be in your downloads folder.

I’ve successfully downloaded the SQL file. Note the size of it… 82.3MB! I’ll go over what happens when the file size is too big to upload using the Bluehost utility.

Once both of these processes (FTP & database export) are completed, you’re done with Step 1 and ready to move on to the next stage.

(If you find this tutorial helpful and need a hosting provider, please consider signing up with Bluehost through my affiliate link!)

Step 2 – Set up your Domain on Bluehost

You own the Domain, but it’s still associated with the original hosting provider.  Bluehost doesn’t know anything about your domain, so you need to tell them that the domain exists and you’ll need to validate it by getting the domain’s EPP key from the registrar.  In this video, I’ll go over the process.  Below you will find the same step-by-step instructions.

First, go to the Domains section and select Domain List and then select “Assign a domain to your cPanel account.”

Assign a domain to your cPanel account.

Enter the domain name then you will need to verify the ownership of the domain.

Enter your domain name

There are several ways to verify the website.  In this example, I’m going to get the EPP code from my domain registrar and enter that into the appropriate field:

Enter the EPP Code to verify the domain name.

What’s an EPP Code, you ask?  The Extensible Provisioning Protocol is a unique code associated with your domain.  The bottom line is that you need this so that your domain can be verified as yours and someone else can’t steal it.  In my example, here’s are the settings for my domain, where to get an EPP/Auth Code and what the process looks like.  Keep in mind this will be different for each registrar, but the process is conceptually the same.

Domain settings. Under General Settings there’s an option for getting the EPP key

In general settings, there’s a link to Email Auth Info to Registrant.

Email Auth Info to Registrant

When I click the Email link, I receive an EPP Code.  Enter this code in the Bluehost validation field and keep going.

My email with my unique EPP key.

Next, you’ll pick where you want to put the domain name.  Bluehost will create a folder for the domain… you’ll want to use that.  You have the option to create a different location if you want to.  This is where you’ll be copying all of the website files that you downloaded in the previous step.  At this point, you’re ready to create the new database, import your SQL file and upload all your website files.

(If you find this tutorial helpful and need a hosting provider, please consider signing up with Bluehost through my affiliate link!)

Step 3 – Upload your website to Bluehost, Create a new Database and Import your SQL file

Now that we’ve added the domain (and verified it) to your Bluehost account, we need to upload the website files to the appropriate directory and then create a database and import the SQL database file.  When you assign the new add-on domain in Bluehost, Bluehost’s server will create a directory for the domain and populate that with some default web files.

Connect to your Bluehost account using FileZilla (or whatever FTP client you prefer).  If you haven’t set up an FTP user in Bluehost, follow the steps below to do that.  If you have, then skip down to the section on uploading the files and creating the database.

Creating an FTP user for Bluehost

In the cPanel, find the FTP icon.  It’s at the top in the File Management section:

Select the FTP icon to set up a new FTP user

Add a new user in the Add FTP Account area.  You can name that user whatever you want & set a secure password (make sure it’s one you will remember or write it down somewhere).  It will create a user ID for your FTP account.

Add an FTP user

Once you have your user set up, configure the site in the FileZilla site manager.

Configure the site manager to connect with your Bluehost account using the new user you just created.

Upload Your Website Files and Create a New Database

Once you’ve configured your FTP client to connect to Bluehost using the user that you just created, navigate to the folder with your domain (this was created when you set up your add-on domain) and copy the website files, which you previously downloaded to your desktop, up to Bluehost.

Copy the website files from your desktop over to the domain folder on your Bluehost account.

While your files are uploading, you can go back to the Bluehost cPanel and create a database for your website.  Effectively what you’re doing is creating creating an empty database which you will then populate by importing your SQL file – the one that you exported back in Step 1.

Creating a new database is an easy step.  With Bluehost, you need to navigate to the Databases area.  You can get there by selecting the “Databases” link at the top navigation bar, or if you’re in the cPanel, you can find the “MySQL Databases” link in the Database Tools section.  They’ll both take you to the same place:

Creating a new database is as simple as naming it and assigning a database user.

Enter your database name – it can be whatever you want.  Next, you will need to assign a database user to the database.  If you already have a user (this would be the case if you have other websites already), then you can use that.  If you don’t, creating a user is simple.

After you’ve created your database, scroll down to the Add New User area and create a new user and then assign that user to the database.  Bluehost will give you a permissions selection screen, and you’ll want to give your primary database user “all permissions” to the database.  Make sure you remember or write down your DB user password.  We’ll need that to connect your database to your WordPress files in Step 4.

Either create a new user and assign it to the database or assign an existing user to it if you have already created other users or other databases.

Once you’ve created your database and assigned a user to it, it’s time to import your .sql file into the database.  To do that, we’ll go to the PHPMyAdmin area in Bluehost (remember this from your original host when we exported it in Step 1?).

Find phpMyAdmin in the Database Tools area of the Bluehost cPanel.

Log into the phpMyAdmin area using your Bluehost account password:

Log into phpMyAdmin with your Bluehost account credentials.

Once inside phpMyAdmin, it will look similar to the administrative area from Step 1 (there may be some variations).  Find and select the import option on the top navigation menu.

Find and select the import option on the phpMyAdmin navigation menu.

The import process is pretty straightforward.  You select the .sql file that you previously exported in Step 1, leave the default settings alone (unless you know what you’re doing and purposely made changes when you exported the original file) and select go.  I’ll go through that in a minute but first make sure that the filesize isn’t too big…

This is important!  Note the file size limit of 50MB on the import screen.  You need to check your .sql file – the one you exported in Step 1 – to see how big it is.  If you have a large website and exceed the file size, there are a couple options to get your file imported.

Make sure to check your .sql file to see if you exceed the file size limits. In this case, my file is too big for a normal import.

If the file is over 50MB, you can either compress the file or you can upload the file to the TMP directory on the Bluehost server using the File Manager option in the cPanel (you can’t do it with the FTP client by default).  This might sound a little complex, but it’s really not hard.  Here’s how to do it:

Select the File Manager from the cPanel.

Select the File Manager in cPanel.

Select the domain that you are creating.

Select your domain in the document root area.

Then, in the file manager, find the TMP directory, select it and then use the upload icon to upload your .sql file to the file manager.  By doing this, phpMyAdmin will find the .sql file in the website upload directory and you can directly import it from there.  This effectively gets around the file size limit using the phpMyAdmin upload option.

Use the file manager to upload your .sql file to the website upload directory.

Once the .sql file is imported, we’ll get the green light… or bar.

The .sql file has been successfully imported.

Now, it’s important to remember that just because the .sql file has been imported into the database, that doesn’t mean that the site is ready to go live.  If you recall, we did not make any changes when we downloaded the site from the original host.  That means that the WordPress files are still configured for the original hosting provider and original database.

In the final step, we’ll modify the wp-config.php file to connect the new database with the website files on the new hosting provider.  But before we go there, here’s the video step-by-step process that we just went over.

Step 4 – Edit your configuration files and change the Nameservers

Now that we have all the files uploaded to the new hosting environment and the .sql files imported into the database, we need to connect them together and then tell the internet where to find your new site by updating the name servers.

The file that controls how the database links to the website files is the wp-config.php file.  You can find this file by connecting to Bluehost with FileZilla, selecting wp-config.php and then selecting view/edit.

You will need to have a text editor to make changes.  In the video tutorial I’m using Dreamweaver, but there are excellent free options available such as Notepad++ for Windows users andKomodo Edit for Mac users.

Update the wp-config.php file with your new database and user credentials. Note that for Bluehost accounts, you will need to set the host as localhost.

Even though the “host name” for Bluehost is box484.bluehost.com, you will need to set the DB_Host variable as “localhost.”  If you miss this, you will get an internal server error when you try to connect to the site.

After you’ve made these changes, the next step is to update the nameservers at your domain registrar to point to Bluehost instead of the original hosting provider.  The registrar settings are what tells the internet where to find your website.  Until these are changed to Bluehost’s nameservers, your site URL will continue to point to your old website even if you have all the new files set up and connected.  This is the last step required to take your new website live and complete the migration.

Changing the Nameservers

BulkRegister is my domain registrar.  Each registrar is going to look different, but the process will be the same.  Find the DNS Server Settings.

Find the DNS Server Settings option in your registrar account. In this example, I’m using BulkRegister.com.

You’ll find the Nameservers here.  This is where you will put the settings that Bluehost provides for their Nameservers.

Updating the nameserver records to point to Bluehost.

Once you make these Name Server changes, it may take the internet some time for that information to “propagate.”  I’ve had the process take only moments, but in other cases a few hours.  Once this is done, your new website will be live.

Because you won’t be able to tell any visual difference between how your new site looks and how your old one did, you might wonder… did it work?  One way to check this out is to navigate to www.whois.com and look up your website and verify the information.

You can verify that your settings have been updated by going to www.whois.com.

Enter your website in the lookup and check the settings:

Nameservers are pointing to Bluehost and the site is working.

Once your site is working and you’ve verified that the Name Server settings have been changed, congratulate yourself because you’ve successfully migrated your website!

If you’ve found this tutorial helpful and need a hosting provider, please consider signing up with Bluehost through my affiliate link.  Also, please post a comment if you have any helpful advice or observations that others might find useful.

Just completed my own riff on the awesome paintings by Melissa Graves Brown (who is so much better than I’ll ever be!).  I guess it’s true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!  I love the vibrancy of the colors and the dreamy atmosphere.  Oil on canvas.

I also built a new float frame, this one a two tone with a natural stain face and outside with a black inside.  Nice compliment to the picture and it looks nice in my living room!  Hopefully I’ll get a picture of the finished product posted soon.

I’ve found myself in the t-shirt designing business again lately, which has been fun!  The first design was on a short timeframe (i.e. a day) for a company sponsored walk for the American Diabetes Association, so all I had to work with is that we needed a design on a red t-shirt for the walk and then give extras away to customers.  The second one is our entry in a design contest for the youth group winter retreat.  The winner gets to go on the retreat for half price, so hopefully we’ve got a shot at it.

Peace, Music & Insurance

And for the youth retreat in Gatlinburg, TN.  In these designs, I’m attempting to capture a little of the feel of the Great Smokey Mountains National Park through what is meant to look like a retro poster on the back and a nod to the park entrance signs for the front pocket.  Here’s the shirt back design…

BYG Winter Retreat 2014 design contest entry (back of the shirt)

And here’s the front pocket design:

Here’s the front pocket design entry for the BYG 2014 Winter Retreat t-shirt contest

I just uploaded a new video to YouTube on making a canvas, specifically a gallery wrap canvas.  This is the first video I made, but it’s just the middle part of the process that I shot for a complete painting.  I’m going to try to get to a video on the building of the frame which is easy and cheap if you do it yourself, then the whole process of priming it and then, maybe, painting the whole picture.  For small canvases I recommend going to the local art store and buying one, but for the larger ones, you can definitely save money making them yourselves, assuming you have the tools.

If you have the need to order any art supplies, I use Dick Blick and there’s pretty much always a promo going on with them.  If you got some value out of my video, I’d appreciate you considering using my affiliate link:

Get BLICK free shipping on orders of $45 and up, on December 18th, 2014 only! Offer ends midnight PST, December 18th, 2014. (Exclusions apply.)

I’m reading some great books this week.  Talking to Humans, Kindle version for $0.99 and Carol Dwerk’s Mindset (recommended to me by my mom).

I’m listening to some great podcast episodes this week.  Dale Callahan’s interview Howard Ward on “knowing when to start a new venture” and Pat Flynn’s interview with Cole Humphus.

Also listening to UCB Undiscovered which, while technically not a podcast, can be heard on Soundcloud.

I’m working on writing more this week.  Now that I have a plan.

If you’re a designer, boring is bad… right?

A helpful flowchart for brewing your own coffee.  And a really old (and kind of stupid) video I put on YouTube.

And speaking of videos, maybe you thought the Icelandic Celebrities were weird, but they’re not even in the same universe with Thunderhead.

Saw this field guide to the American Sandwich on Austin Kleon’s blog.  It made me hungry.

David Brooks on career success and happiness.

John Corcoran on talking to strangers and happiness.

I was mesmerized by this story on Here and Now.  It made me rethink what clothes I’m buying.

Have a great week!

Ed

I am in the middle of building an adaptation of Ana White’s Kendal Extra Wide Dresser.  In this post, I’m constructing the drawers.  This dresser has 3 drawers along the top and 4 drawers below.  One of the changes I made in my version is to construct the drawer boxes out of 1/2″ plywood instead of 1x lumber.  

If you recall, the actual width of 1x lumber is 3/4″ (see this link for nominal vs. actual sizes), but I think this makes the drawers look a little too chunky and also a bit heavy.  I’m also constructing them so the bottom panel fits into dado grooves in the drawer box sides which I think is a little more sturdy, as opposed to 1/4″ bottom panel nailed to the drawer box from the bottom.

Here’s a link to the dresser frame model in SketchUp.

Building the Drawers

This dresser has 3 small drawers on the top and 4 larger drawers underneath.  First I’ll go over the small drawer construction in detail so you can see the assembly and get the measurements, then I’ll show you the measurements for the 4 larger drawers.  I would strongly recommend that you build the drawers after you’ve completed the frame assembly to compensate for variations in the frame measurements.  Unless you’re an engineer and make everything perfectly, you’re probably going to have some slight variation in your frame construction.

Since the drawers need to be sized so that there’s a 1/2″ gap between the drawer box and the sides to accommodate the drawer slides, it’s smart to take the extra time to measure the width of each drawer individually.  To clarify, you can go ahead and cut the 16″ drawerbox sides all at one time since all the drawers will have the same depth (unless you’ve modified my original plan… then re-measure!).  It’s the drawer front & back pieces that you need to be careful with, as well as the drawer faces and lattice trim.  You can download the 3D SketchUp model here.

Small drawer construction showing drawer box, drawer face and lattice trim.

My plan is different from Ana White’s in that instead of using 1x6s for the drawer box with a 1/4″ panel nailed to the bottom, I’m using 1/2″ plywood and cutting dados (or grooves) 1/4″ from the bottom of the drawer box which the bottom of the drawer will slide into.  The main reason I went this route is that I think the 1x lumber makes the drawers look a little too chunky.  If you measure the drawer boxes in your various furniture, you’ll find most of them are 1/2″ thick.  They have a little more elegant look in my opinion.  Also, I find that the dado construction makes the drawers a little more sturdy.

1/2″ plywood drawer boxes are cut with a dado that is 1/4″ from the bottom and 1/4″ deep.

Don’t be intimidated by cutting dado grooves in your drawer panels.  Yes, you’re going to need a dado blade.  My recommendation is this one from Freud.  It is relatively inexpensive and makes great, smooth cuts.  I researched these for a while looking for a good balance between high quality and economical and have been really pleased with this one.  It comes with risers that will cut up to a 13/16″ dado, but my saw’s arbor (that’s the bolt that holds the blades on it) is only long enough to get about 1/2″.

Freud dado blade

Below is the dado setup.  Use a carpenter’s square to measure 1/4″ deep and 1/4″ from the fence.

Dado blade mounted on my table saw

Drawer box pieces with the dado groove

After cutting the dado grooves in the drawer box panels, I assembled them using pocket hole construction with the handy Kreg Jig.  If you haven’t bought one of these yet, what are you waiting for?  Seriously, these things are so incredibly handy.  Not necessary… you can nail and screw without one, but they really do make an incredibly strong joint and make constructing these drawers so much easier.

I marked each panel on the inside for the pocket holes.  I’m going to drill on the outside so the pocket holes won’t be visible (on the front they’ll be covered by the drawer face and no one will see the back), and I can see exactly where to line up the panel when I have it clamped into the Kreg Jig.

Drawer box panels marked for pocket holes

Drawer box panels with pocket holes waiting to be sanded and assembled

For assembling the panels, I found that the Kreg clamps are really helpful.  You can accomplish the same thing with just about any other clamps, but when you’re doing this and balancing drawer box panels while trying to clamp, the Kreg clamps are quite handy.

Be sure to sand the panels before constructing them.  You don’t want to mess with sanding once the drawers are constructed because getting into the corners will be a pain.

You’ll also want to have your drawer bottoms handy.  It will be helpful, when inserting the drawer bottoms into the dado grooves, if you sand the edges of the drawer bottoms so they taper slightly.  This will allow them to get all the way into the dado groves and allow for a little bit of movement as you’re lining up the sides.

Here are my drawer bottom panels cut from 1/4″ plywood and sanded.

While the Kreg Jig does get great strong joints, sometimes it can be a challenge clamping the pieces so they don’t slide when trying to attach them.  For these drawer box panels, I used a block of scrap wood and a clamp to stop the panel from creeping in when screwing.  The Kreg clamp that I used on the frame legs is a little heavy duty for this 1/2″ plywood, so I found this method, while requiring a little balance with your hands lining things up and clamping, to be much easier.  This is where the other Kreg clamp comes in handy since using it with one hand is easy.  Again, you don’t need the brand name clamp, but it sure is convenient!

Attaching the drawer box sides using a clamp and block.

Another shot of a partially assembled drawer. In this shot I went ahead and inserted the drawer bottom for additional support.

Here’s a shot of the corner construction similar to the model above, but this is what it really looks like.

Front drawer panel attached to the side. Remember, the front is inset into the sides so the length of side panels is the same as the depth of the drawer. Pocket holes are also cut in the front and back panels.

Here’s a shot of the fully constructed drawer box (upside down).  Note that the face frame hasn’t been attached yet.

Here’s a shot of the fully constructed drawer.

Now that I’ve gone over the the basics of the drawer construction, here’s the dimensions and construction of the 4 larger drawers.  Again, you can download this drawer model from Google SketchUp and manipulate them yourselves to suit your own design.

Large drawer box construction

Building the Drawer Faces

I wanted to give the dresser drawers a little more visual impact with 1/4″ lattice trim instead of them having just a flat surface with a drawer pull.  If you don’t want to do that, you’ll need to modify where you put your drawer rails.  Instead of them being inset 1″ (for the 1×8 drawer faces which are actually 3/4″ thick plus the 1/4″ lattice), you’ll need to move them forward slightly to 3/4″.

You can buy strips of lattice at Home Depot or Lowes and you’ll find them in the moulding section.  You’ve got a few options; they come in pine either unfinished or finished or you can find them in a synthetic material like PVC.  The benefit to the PVC is that they are perfectly straight.  You may also find them in PVC with a laminate that’s supposed to be stainable and paintable.  They’re probably great, but I’ve stuck to the old school pine ones.  I guess I’m just afraid that the paint will peel over time.

Here’s a picture of the lattice in case you’re not clear on what I’m talking about.

You can either miter the corners of the lattice trim or use butt joints.  Since I mitered the trim on the dresser top, I wanted to match that look on the drawers.  This is not complicated, it’s just tedious and there are a lot of strips to cut for the 7 drawers.  I recommend cutting each drawer’s trim individually and measuring (and re-measuring) each step of the way since the trim needs to fit exactly.

Here the lattice is rough cut to approximately the right size. I’ll measure each drawer’s trim individually and make the miter cuts.

Also, don’t assume that your miter saw’s 45° setting is correct.  On my Delta saw, I’ve removed the clip that clicks & locks at the 45° mark and instead measure each time with a carpenter’s square (unplug the saw when you do this!).  I’ve found out the hard way that my saw’s printed measurements are slightly off.

Using a carpenter’s speed square to measure the 45 degree angle for the miter saw.

Here I’ve cut each strip of lattice, first with the 45s on the right side of each strip.  Use a carpenter’s square to draw a 45° line as a guide for the saw blade.  Then I turn the strips over and measure each one individually along the side to which I’m going to attach it and mark it before I cut.  The other benefit to this method is that I don’t have to adjust the saw again since I’m making the other side cut with the lattice upside down.  I always cut it slightly “generous” as I can always shave a little off, but I can’t add any back!

After I make my initial cut, I turned the lattice strip over and marked the exact edge, then measured for my 2nd 45 degree cut. Each one. Individually.

Before attaching the lattice, I lay it out on top of the drawer face to make sure everything fits precisely.  I wish I had a shortcut for this part, but since I cut each drawer face individually, I want to get the trim matching the particular faces perfectly.  Yea, I know, it’s a lot of cutting…

Cutting each piece of the lattice individually is time consuming and tedious, but the upside is that your lattice fits perfectly!

Here’s a shot of the lattice ready to be attached to a drawer face.

Lattice trim cut and ready to be attached to the drawer face.

As you can see, this will make a really nice compliment to the dresser top construction.  For attaching the trim to the drawer faces, you can either go the simple, “old school” route with glue and something heavy to hold them down…

Gluing the drawer face trim and setting with something heavy, in this case some paint cans

Or you can go with the “new school” route of nailing them down with finishing brad nails. Make sure you use glue either way!  You can do this with a hammer and nails or with a nail gun if you have access to one.  If you use a hammer, you’ll want to get nail setter to countersink the nails slightly.  You will also need a little stainable wood filler to fill in the nail holes.  If you use a nail gun, you’ll want 18 gauge 5/8″ finishing nails since the face plate plus the lattice trim is 1″ thick.

Nailing down the door trim with 18 gauge 5/8″ finishing nails.

Here’s another shot of the almost finished dresser with the drawer faces laid into the drawers.  The next step will be actually attaching the drawer faces to the drawer boxes.  Er… actually the next step will be sanding the drawer faces and then attaching them…

• Go back to the first post with diagrams and cut list.
• Go to the second post on Cutting and Framing

I’ve been wanting to build a dresser for some time now and finally decided to take the plunge.  After searching for a long time to find one I like, I settled on a modified version of Ana White’s Kendal Extra Wide Dresser.  This has an overall clean design and I like the way the drawers are inset into the frame & Ana did a great job with the design.

Model of the Kendal Extra Wide Dresser

For my version, I made some modifications to Ana’s design.  First of all, I made some changes to the frame construction, specifically changing the back supports to 1x4s (since I read that some of the drawer slide back supports didn’t line up.  I also used 1x2s for the bottom support and added several to the top specifically to attach the dresser top surface to the frame.

I also modified the top of the dresser by framing the plywood with 1×3 strips.  In my version, I mitered the corners to give the top a decorative look since I’m staining mine instead of painting it.  If I were painting, I’d go the east route and use butt joints on the trim.  Since this design has the plywood top fitting just inside the side panels (see the model to know exactly what I’m talking about) I added those top supports so I could attach the top by screwing to these from underneath.

Lastly, I constructed the drawers using 1/2″ plywood instead of the 1x lumber in Ana’s original plan.  Of course, this was after I cut wood according to her original plan.  I thought it made the drawers look to chunky and smaller and after I measured all the other drawers in various pieces of furniture around the house it looks like 1/2″ is pretty much the standard.  And in hindsight, I’m really pleased with that decision.  The other difference in the drawers was how I constructed the bottom.  I used a dado blade on my table saw to cut 1/4″ grooves 1/4″ from the bottom of the drawers and constructed the drawers so that the bottom was inset into the sides.  This is, in my opinion, a little more sturdy than nailing the drawer bottoms to the boxes.

These changes are minor and the dresser will look & function great either way.  I’ve also created a full 3D SketchUp model of the Kendal Extra Wide Dresser so you can download, deconstruct and manipulate it however you would like.

Cut List – Dresser Top

• 1 – 3/4″ plywood @ 15 1/2″ x 49 1/2″ (dresser top)
• 2 – 1x3s @ 54 5/8″ (top trim)
• 2 – 1x3s @ 20 1/2″ (top trim)

Cut List – Dresser Frame

• 2 – 3/4″ plywood @ 15 1/2″ x 26 1/4″ (side panels)
• 4 – 2x2s @ 31 1/4″
• 2 – 2x2s @ 49 1/2″
• 3 – 1x4s @ 49 1/2″ (these can be cheap wood… back supports)
• 3 – 1×2 @ 49 1/2″ (front drawer face frame)
• 4 – 1x2s @ 15 1/2″ (top & bottom supports)
• 4 – 1x2s @ 7 1/2″

Cut List – Drawers

• 14 – 1/2″ plywood @ 5 3/4″ x 16″ (drawer box sides)
• 8 – 1/2″ plywood @ 5 3/4″ x 22 3/8″
• 6 – 1/2″plywood @ 5 3/4″ x 14″
• 4 – 1/4″ plywood @ 22 7/8″ x 15 1/2″ (drawer bottoms, large)
• 3 – 1/4″ plywood @ 14 1/2″ x 15 1/2″ (drawer bottoms, small)
• 3 – 1×8 @ 15 3/4″
• 4 – 1×8 @ 24 1/8″
• 8 – 1/4″ lattice @ 24 1/8″
• 6 – 1/4″ lattice @ 15 3/4″
• 14 – 1/4″ lattice @ 7 1/4″

Shopping List

• 1 – 3/4″ plywood @ 4′ x 8′ – Buy a nice sanded hardwood plywood since this will be the sides and top of your dresser.  You will only use about half of the plywood.  Since the top panel is slightly longer than 4′, you can’t get away with half
• 1 – 1/2″ plywood @ 4′ x 8′ – This is for your drawer boxes.
• 1 – 1/4″ plywood @ 4′ x 8′ – This will be for your drawer bottoms and the back of the dresser
• 3 – 2×2 @ 8′ lumber
• 3 – 1×4 @ 8′ pine boards – I suggest cheap wood here since this is basically frame supports for the back that will be covered up.
• 2 – 1×3 @ 8′ select pine or hardwood boards – These will be trim for the dresser top, so get nice wood.
• 3 – 1×2 @ 6′ select pine or hardwood boards – These will be for the face frame
• 2 – 1×8 @ 8′ select pine or hardwood boards – These will be the drawer faces
• Lattice strips – You can cut these to size at Home Depot.  You will need 3 @ 4′ long, 4 @ 5 1/2′ and 3 @ 7 1/2′.  This gives you a little room to work with.
• 7 – 16″ bottom mount drawer slides
• 4 – rear drawer track sockets
• 7 – drawer pulls of your choice

Below is a cut diagram for the dresser.  This does not include the lattice trim (see the shopping list above).

Cut Diagram for the Kendal Extra Wide Dresser

Here’s a shot of the almost finished product so you can get an idea of the look & feel of it.

Here’s my almost finished Kendal Extra Wide Dresser

• See the next post for Cutting and Framing your dresser
• Check out this post for constructing the drawers.

Lots more on this project to come…!

I’m in the middle of a project to build my own modified version of Ana White’s Kendal Extra Wide Dresser.  Actually, I’m concurrently building 2 dressers at the same time, but that’s a story for another post!  In this post, I’ll cover cutting the wood and building the frame.

Cutting Your Wood

I’ve included a cut diagram in the previous post that will be helpful.  You can also download this if you’re a SketchUp user so that you can see it a little better.

I recommend that you have the store make initial cuts on your plywood when you buy it.  This makes the work at home much easier (unless you have a table saw large enough to handle a full sheet of plywood!) and also helps with transportation.

That involves ripping* the 3/4″ plywood sheet into 2 strips 15 1/2″ wide.  That will leave a strip slightly shorter than 17″ (that’s because the saw blade is around 1/8″ thick… this is important to remember when you’re working on your own cuts & measuring your stock).  The folks at Home Depot or Lowes will do this for you, but make sure that they measure carefully and get the cuts exactly… you don’t want that pesky saw blade to turn your 15 1/2″ strip into a 15 3/8″ strip!  These will be your dresser top and the sides.

*Ripping wood means cutting it in the direction of the grain.  Cutting against the grain is referred to as “cross-cutting.”

Rip your 3/4″ plywood into 2 strips 15 1/2 wide.

Next, rip your 1/2″ plywood into 6 strips 5 3/4″ wide.  These strips will be used for your drawer boxes.  Again, have the folks at the store cut your strips and then do the cross cuts at home.  I’ll go over the way I do that below.  Pay close attention to these cuts because it’s easy to get confused with all the panels.  You can always cut something too long, but if you cut it too short, then there’s not much you can do about that!

I would also suggest that you wait to do your cross cuts until you’ve built the dresser frame and measure them individually.  This won’t matter for the drawer box panels that are 16″ (the depth of the drawers) but it will for the panels that comprise the front and back of the drawer boxes.  Even the best measured plans are dealing with wood which can contract or expand slightly based on humidity.  Measuring the drawers individually takes a little longer but may save you some work in the long run.

Rip the 1/2″ plywood into 6 strips 5 3/4″ wide.

The 1/4″ plywood sheet will provide your drawer bottoms and the back of the dresser.  You’ll want to have the store rip a 15 1/2″ strip from your sheet, but you’ll need to do the other cuts at home.  You’ll have 4 large drawer bottoms and 3 smaller ones.

Rip a 15 1/2″ strip from the 1/2″ plywood. Make the other cuts at home.

Constructing the Frame

Once you’ve cut your plywood sides, the 4 2×2 legs and the frame (which consists of your 2x2s and 1x2s), you’ll want to drill your pocket holes all together.  This takes a little while and I’ve definitely found it helpful to knock all this out at one time.

You’ll use pocket holes to attach the plywood sides to the legs as well as to the dresser top.  For the top, the screws will actually attach to the trim, so that’s why my plan has additional cross supports to attach the dresser top (more on that later).

Side panel & frame supports with pocket holes

You’ll notice that my wood looks really different in these pictures.  That’s because I used a good bit of “reclaimed” wood to build this particular dresser (you can see my other one in the background!)

Various parts of the dresser frame.

A note on the hardware… when attaching the 3/4″ boards to other 3/4″ stock, you’ll use 1 1/4″ pocket hole screws.  When attaching 2x2s to other 2x2s, you’ll use 2″ pocket hole screws.  Make sure that when you are drilling your pocket holes that you measure and make adjustments to your Kreg Jig and the drill bit itself or you’ll end up drilling a hole in your jig (like I did!)

The dresser has 2×2 cross supports on the bottom front and the top rear. Take a good look at the plans!

The cross supports (I’m using 3 on the top and 1 on the bottom) are different sizes because the back frame has a 2×2 on the top, but 3/4″ thick 1x4s on the bottom.

1×2 frame boards with pocket holes

Also, don’t get so caught up in drilling your pocket holes that you end up drilling some in your dresser legs (again like I did!).  These won’t have any holes at all.  You’ll see on one leg that I had to add plugs where I drilled holes.  What would a project be without a bunch of mistakes?  That’s what wood filler is for!

Here are a couple tips on assembling the frame.

First, sand your wood before assembling everything.  Sanding is the biggest pain and I like to try and knock it all out at once.  It makes a total mess in the garage/workshop/basement/wherever.  You’ll inevitably want to do a little more once you get the whole thing put together where you find some right edges, but try to do as much as you can up front.

Also, sand after you drill your pocket holes since drilling them will leave some rough edges around the holes.

Second, glue all your joints with a good quality wood glue.

Third, notice that the inside of the side panels – the side you drilled the pocket holes on – attach flush to the edge of the 2×2 legs.  Be careful here!  This can create some aggravation when you’re trying to clamp the sides to the legs to attach.  Don’t make the mistake of assembling with the outside facing side of dresser panel flush with the edge of the legs.

You may also find that you like certain sides of your legs and want a particular face to be more visible, especially if you’re staining the dresser, so take care to make sure that the legs are attached such that the best faces are visible.

Inside of the side panel should be flush to the edge of the dresser legs

Note that the pocket holes are on the inside of the side panel which is flush to the edge of the legs.

Forth, go ahead and spring for the Kreg clamps, both the right angle clamp and the face clamp.  These are so handy and once you get the screw set for the right tension, you can manage them one-handed which is a big plus!

Using the Kreg Right Angle clamp is a major time saver!

I don’t know how I managed without this thing before!

Fifth, check to make sure that your joins are square often!  Because the Kendal Extra Wide Dresser has “inset” drawers that are set into the face frame (vs. “overlay” drawers in which the drawer face slightly overlaps the frame), you don’t have a lot of room for error.  There should be about a 1/8″ gap around the drawer faces between the face and the frame, so if your frame is not square, that will give you fits when you’re making your drawers.  Use a speed square to quickly tell if your joints are square.

Cutting & Assembling the Dresser Top

More to come…

• Go back to the Intro post.
• Go to the post on making the Drawer Boxes.

I just uploaded a video tutorial series on YouTube on how to create a brochure in InDesign.  For this series, I’m taking a brochure Beth created in Pages and I’m re-creating as a lesson in using InDesign.  I find tutorials creating something “real world” to be more helpful than a generic lesson and I’ve tried to explain each of the steps as well as the features of InDesign that I used.  For those of you already very familiar with InDesign, this will probably be more basic that you need.  My target audience here are folks who are generally working in Word or in Pages and want to move to InDesign where there’s more flexibility than the basic word processors allow. 

Episode 1: Intro and Header

In this first episode, I’ll tackle the trickiest part of this brochure; the header in which there’s a picture that is cropped to follow the contours of a ribbon graphic.  This is a technique that you will be able to apply in lots of different ways in your documents.

Episode 2: Layout and Graphical Elements

In the 2nd episode I’ll focus on the layout of the brochure.  Giving some thought to the layout and setting up your document with distinct areas can help you make your brochures a little more professional.  I’ll show you how to use guides and frames to set up your document so that it’s much easier to fill in text and pictures.

Episode 3: Adding Text and Pictures

Now that we have the header and layout set up in the document, it’s time to add the document copy and pictures.  In this 3rd episode, I’ll show you how to use the InDesign interface to fill out your brochure.  InDesign is different from your typical word processor, and if you’re new to the program, finding the tools to do simple things can be tough.  This video hits on the basics of adding text, sizing, changing colors, changing characters and other formatting functions.

Episode 4: Finishing Touches

In this last episode, I will finish up the brochure with the remaining sub-headings, text boxes and formatting to get a final product.

I hope that you’ve found this project helpful.

I’ve been busy making a series of iPhone backgrounds from a photo shoot in Utah.  I find myself so addicted to my phone that sometimes just looking at it raises my blood pressure.  What’s happening behind that locked screen?  Am I missing something important?  What’s trending that I don’t know about?  Who’s emailing me?  Who likes my Instagram?  I created this series to use on my lock screen like a speed bump, evoking the beauty of the Rocky Mountains and trails among the Aspens, making me stop and realize that my little glass screen is reflecting the beauty of the creation around me if I will stop my digital obsession and take notice of it.  I hope that for me (and maybe for you if you need it) this will be a calming encouragement to turn my phone off and take in the real world I’m living in.

To accommodate the iPhone 6 parallax feature, the downloads below (for 6) are 2592 x 1453 (or close) which is the parallax resolution for the 6 Plus.  I don’t have an iPhone 6, but it’s my understanding that the images will downsize, so these should work on both the 6 and the 6 Plus.  If you have any trouble with the image showing up correctly, let me know and I’ll be glad to add the smaller resolution for the 6.

If you’re viewing this post on an iPhone, then adding the backgrounds to your lock screen (or home screen) is easy.  If you’re on a computer, you will need to download them and copy them to your iPhone.  You can email them to yourself or sync them using iTunes.  The way I do this is to put the backgrounds in a folder (in my Pictures directory on my Mac) and then in the Photos option under tour settings, select to “Copy photos from” and “Choose Folder,” then select the folder your backgrounds are in.

Enjoy!

Green Aspens

• iPhone 6
• iPhone 5
• iPhone 4

 A Quiet Trail

• iPhone 6
• iPhone 5
• iPhone 4

Through the Aspens

• iPhone 6
• iPhone 5
• iPhone 4

Wild Flowers

• iPhone 6
• iPhone 5
• iPhone 4

Aspen Leaf

• iPhone 6
• iPhone 5
• iPhone 4

Dandelion

• iPhone 6
• iPhone 5
• iPhone 4

Reaching Heavenward

• iPhone 6
• iPhone 5
• iPhone 4

Solitude

• iPhone 6
• iPhone 5
• iPhone 4

I left off the last post as I was completing the frame and the dresser top.  Here’s a picture of where we are in the process:

Dresser frame

We also began assembling the dresser top, which consists of a piece of 3/4″ plywood 15 1/2″ by 49 1/2″ which will be wrapped in 1×3″ poplar trim strips (in this project… you can use whatever wood you want).  I cut the trim on diagonal joints because I like the look, however you are free to use butt joints as well.  It just depends on the look that you’re going for.

Kendal Extra Wide Dresser Top with the skirt “Exploded.” You can just as easily use butt joints if you prefer.

The steps here are to:

1. Cut your plywood top
2. Cut your 1x3s
3. Assemble the trim to the top with pocket hole screws and wood glue (I am also using a biscuit joiner for additional stability, but that’s optional!)

When cutting trim like this, it’s critical to get your angles exactly right at 45°.  It’s easier and more “forgiving” to use butt joints, but in this project, I intend to stain the top so I prefer this slightly more decorative approach.  Also, when cutting, I tend to err on the long side so I can make minute adjustments to ensure that there are no gaps.  This is kind of tedious and you definitely need to be patient here.

I use a carpenter’s speed square to make sure my miter saw is cutting a 45% degree angle.

After cutting the trim, drill your pocket holes and then biscuit joints (if using them).  Below you can see that I’m attaching with pocket holes at the corners and along the edge.  If you are using a biscuit joiner, be sure to cut your biscuit slots with the top surface of both the plywood and the trim facing down.  This way the top joints are flush.  Since your plywood and trim are different kinds of wood they will probably have very slight differences in width.  Don’t expect your wood, especially if you bought it from one of the big box home improvement centers, to be perfect.  It never is!

Mark your dresser top so that you remember which side is up when attaching your trim!

It’s also important to attach your trim with the appropriate sides facing the top.  It’s easy to make an error here if you’re not paying attention.  I suggest writing the surface face on your wood when assembling it.

I recommend cutting the trim as you are attaching it. That way you can make sure that your pieces fit exactly.

I’ve marked the surface of my plywood as well so that the nicest side is used for the top, especially since I’ll be staining this dresser.

Here’s a picture of the fully assembled top with trim.  Use wood glue when joining all surfaces.  The Kreg clamp in the bottom right is really invaluable to ensure that the surfaces of your trim are flush.

And finally, here’s the fully assembled dresser top, drying and waiting to be sanded, assembled to the frame and stained.

The fully assembled dresser top

More to come…

Check out the other posts:

• How to build a Kendal Extra Wide Dresser Introduction
• Cutting & Framing
• Making the Dresser Top
• Constructing the Drawers
• Attaching Drawer Slides
• Assembling the Dresser and Attaching Drawer Faces
• Finishing

Now that we have the frame and the top built and the dresser drawers as well as their faces constructed, it’s time to assemble the entire project and attach the drawer faces to the drawers.

In this post I’m going to attach the drawer faces before attaching the dresser top because it’s easier to work with the drawers this way.  You’ll notice in some of these pictures that I’ve already stained this dresser.  When I was actually constructing it, I finished the dresser before I assembled it, but I’d prefer to cover finishing in a post by itself, so I’m skipping over that step right now.  I’ll come back to it in my final post.

Below you’ll see my drawer pull and a couple drill bits.  I’m drilling the hole in my face frame with the drill bit in the middle.  I will drill my hole in the front of the drawer using the larger 1/4″ drill bit.  The reason I’m doing this is to give the drawer face a little “wiggle room” when using the spacers to position it.  This will make more sense as you read through the post.

Because this plan has inlaid drawers, attaching the drawer faces to the drawers while maintaining consistent spacing between the faces and the face frame of the dresser can be a little tricky.  You need to make sure that when you drill holes in the drawer face and the drawer front (to line them up and attach the pull) that the face panel is already positioned relative to the drawer itself to fit.

There are lots of posts on the internet with methods to do this, but the method I’ll use is to slide each drawer into it’s place, use craft sticks (or tongue depressors) to space the drawer face in the frame and against the drawer, then use a hand drill to drill the hole in the drawer front.  That way, when I attach the pull, which basically holds the face panel to the drawer (along with glue & nails), it’s already positioned with the appropriate space.

The first step in attaching the drawer faces to the drawers is to drill holes for the drawer pulls.  It’s fine to use a hand drill for this, however in the picture I’m using a drill press.  Measure and drill in the exact center of your drawer faces.

Next, I’ll place the drawer into the slot, then position the drawer face with spacers all around it.

Holding the drawer in place, I’ll use my cordless drill to drill through the face panel hole through the actual drawer front, ensuring appropriate spacing.  Before I actually attach the drawer pull, I’ll take the drawer out and using a slightly larger 1/4″ drill bit, I’ll “overdrill” the drawer front, making the original hole a little larger.  This will allow me to make very slight adjustments to the drawer face even after I’ve attached it with the drawer pull.

Once I have the drawer face positioned precisely and the drawer pull attached, I’ll nail the face to the drawer front from the inside.

The result of this is a perfectly spaced inset drawer:

I’ll use this method with each drawer individually and mark each drawer to make sure that it goes in the right drawer slot.

Once all of the drawers are assembled with the drawer faces, it’s time to attach the top to the dresser.  I’ve intentionally waited to attach the top in order to have easier access to the drawers to attach the faces.  Now I’ll remove all the drawers and turn the dresser frame over and attach to the dresser top from underneath.  Don’t forget to pre-drill holes in the top frame supports to attach to the dresser top.

This also enables me to ensure that the frame is attached exactly in the center of the dresser top.  While the dresser is upside down, use pocket hole screws to attach the dresser side panels to the top and then use screws to attach the top through the top 3 1×2 supports.  Here are a couple of pictures to illustrate this:

Here’s the (almost) finished product.  My last step will be the final finish and a few coats of to ensure a durable finish before it goes in the boy’s room.

Check out the other posts:

• How to build a Kendal Extra Wide Dresser Introduction
• Cutting & Framing
• Making the Dresser Top
• Constructing the Drawers
• Attaching Drawer Slides
• Assembling the Dresser and Attaching Drawer Faces
• Finishing

I’m pretty excited that my son Jon just had our PrayerDevotion App approved in the App Store!  We’ve been working on this one for quite a while.  The concept is simple: a prayer journal app for the iPhone to keep up with all the things that I’ve told people that I’d pray for with every great intention, but poor execution.

I’m terrible about writing stuff down on scraps of paper and post-it notes, or maybe even a journal, but then losing track of what I’ve written and committed to do.  So Jon and I got together and mapped out a simple application to keep track of prayer requests, categorize them and set a frequency based on dates.  I’ve been using this app as the beta tester for a few months while we’ve been working through the kinks and it’s working well enough for public release.

One of my favorite features is that you can assign a contact to a entry so that you can send the person you’re thinking of a quick email or text to encourage them.

I’d love for those of you who have, or want to have, an active and consistent prayer time to consider installing and using the app.  And better yet, we’d like to do some further development by adding some social functionality and other features, so user feedback would be huge.

Thanks and if you’ve downloaded, let me know here or head over to Jon’s development blog and post a comment.

I’ve had a number of questions about converting my Farmhouse Bed post plan to a king sized version (the original plan is a queen).  While the construction techniques are the same, the king version changes quite a few of the measurements to stretch the headboard and footer.  This post is a detailed plan for the king version.  To give full credit, the original version of this plan is from Ana White’s website (the queen version) which you an see here.  I think Ana has done a king version as well, but this plan is a little bit different.  

You can refer to back to the queen bed plan for a detailed description of the techniques and steps for building the bed.  Since this is the king version, I’m just going to show the design and describe the differences between this and the queen version.

King sized version of the farmhouse bed plan

King Size Measurements

A standard king sized mattress is 76″ wide by 80″ long, but it’s always a good idea when starting a project to measure your mattress since they can vary a bit.  Also, there’s a California king mattress that measures 72″ by 84″ so make sure that if your mattress measures different from the standard size, that you compensate for that with your measurements.

This overall bed dimensions are approximately 83″ wide by 91″ long (including the overlapping  boards on top of the headboard and footer.

Materials List:

• (4) 1” x 8” x 8’ Untreated* Pine Board (For Panels)
• (8) 1” x 4” x 8’ Pine Board (Trim for Panels)
• (2) 4” x 4” x 8’ Beam (Posts)
• (4) 2” x 4” x 8’ Boards (Top of Panels and Siderail Boxspring Supports)
• (6) 2″ x 4″ x 8′ (For Boxspring Supports)
• (2) 2” x 6” x 8’ Boards (Top of Headboard & Footboard)
• (2) 2″ x 8″ x 8″ Boards (For Siderails)
• (16) 4 1/2″ or 5″ Screws**
• Bed Rail Fasteners
• (18) #8 1 3/4″ screws (for bed rail fasteners)
• 1 1/4″ brad nails (for nail gun)

Tools

• Chop/Miter Saw
• Skil Saw
• Measuring tape
• Carpenter’s square
• Drill with 3/8″ bit, 1/2″ bit & #8 counter sink bit (here are some options)
• Nail gun
• Wood glue
• Sander & sandpaper
• Chisels (for mortising the bed rail hardware)
• Biscuit Joiner (this is optional and I’ll discuss it more below.  What’s a biscuit Joiner anyway, you ask?)

*Note that untreated 4″ x 4″ posts can be hard to find at Home Depot & Lowes.  I found a local lumber company that was able to get them for me.

**You can find these at Home Depot in the fastener section.  There are a couple options that I’ve found which you can link to here and here.  You can also use lag bolts as well.  I used the GRK Fasteners in this project.

Cut List

• (8) 1” x 10” @ 25” Headboard Panel
• (8) 1” x 10” @ 15” Footboard Panel
• (8) 1” x 4” @ 74” Trim for Panels
• (2) 4” x 4” @ 49” Headboard Post
• (2) 4” x 4” @ 21” Footboard Post
• (2) 2” x 4” @ 81” Top of Panels and Posts (recommend taking an exact measurement before cutting)
• (2) 2” x 6” @ 83” Top of Headboard and Footboard (add 2″ to the measurement taken above)
• (2) 2″ x 4″ @ 82″ Side Rail Box Spring Support
• (2) 2″ x 8″ @ 82″ Side Rails
• (6) 2x4s @ 77″ Mattress Support Beams
• (8) 2x4s @ 9″ Mattress Support Beam Legs

I’ve also created a printable PDF version of this plan that also includes the accompanying bench, which you can purchase for $5 (it’s about 22 pages in all).  It’s all the info from the blog posts, but I’ve compiled it for easy printing and included shopping lists, cut diagrams and helpful pictures.  Basically, if you want a handy printable version so you don’t have to get sawdust all over your computer, you might consider purchasing this download.  Note that this is for the king version.  If you’re looking for a queen version, you can get it here.

Making the Headboard (and Footer)

King size farmhouse bed headboard

The first step was to create the panels for the headboard and footboard.  The king version of this plan uses 8 1x10s instead of 1x8s.  The 1x10s, with their actual size of 9 1/4″ fit the 74″ panel width perfectly so no trimming is necessary.  Don’t forget about nominal lumber sizes when working through your plan.  Nominal sizes are what’s on the sign on the lumber bins (i.e. 2×4, 1×6, etc.).  Actual sizes are the real dimensions of the wood (less than the nominal size).

If you want to use 1x8s, you will need to either trim 11 of them all to a width of 6.73″ with a table saw or (which is easier in my opinion) use 9 of them as-is and then trim the 2 end ones to 4 3/8” and that way it would look balanced.

Since the 1x10s are bigger than most miter saw blade diameters, you’ll need to use a skil saw.  It’s a bit of a challenge to get the panel boards cut exactly square, so use a guide, clamp everything down and take your time.

Also, I used a hand sander to bevel the edges of the panels before joining them together.  This adds a little definition to the individual panels and gives the bed a more “rustic” look.

King bed headboard panel construction

The original plans didn’t call for biscuits between the panels, but I wanted to give the headboard and footboard both a bit of additional stability.  I used #10 biscuits and glued the panels together.  You could also use pocket holes to attach the panels firmly, but I chose biscuits because I didn’t want the holes in the back of the panels.  Either way will work, particularly if you’re going to paint the bed.  A biscuit joiner is kind of expensive at around $160 (here’s theDeWalt one that I bought), but it’s turned out to be a great investment that I use on almost every project that I do.

Next step is assembling the panels.  Glue and nail the trim to the panels.  Then its time to cut the 4×4 posts and assemble the headboard and footboard.

I mentioned in the queen version plan about the 4×4 posts.  You will probably not find untreated 4×4 posts at Home Depot or Lowes, so you’ll need to call a local lumber shop and order them.  There will be several grades of lumber to choose from and since the 4×4 posts will be prominent and visible on the bed, I suggest getting the highest grade available.

Depending on your lumber yard you may hear terms like grades 1 through 4 (1 being the best) or B through D (B being the best). You may also hear the term S4S which means “surfaced four sides” and generally this is what you want. This means that each face of your board has been surfaced or planed and that the boards will have sharp, well defined corners instead of the rounded edges you find on lumber from the big box retailers. Either will work; it depends on your style and the look you’re going for.

Use untreated 4×4 posts for headboard and footboard

Attaching the Headboard (and Footer) Posts

I described this in detail in the queen post, but it’s worth mentioning again here.  Be sure to pre-drill holes into the 4×4 posts!  If you’ve got access to a drill press, that will help you keep the holes for the lag bolts at exactly 90°.  A drill guide is a cheaper alternative and the next best thing (be sure to clamp it down!).  If you don’t have either, make sure you use a drill that has a level in the handle and take it slow so you can make sure to get a straight 90° hole.  I countersunk the lag bolt holes so I can fill in with wood filler so they won’t be visible.

Ideally you’d pre-drill all the way through the panels to get a tight fit between them and the panels, but because you’re going through a 4×4, you would need an extra long drill bit.  If you don’t have one, I have a workaround to keep the posts tight against the panels using cleats and clamps:

Assembling the Footer

The footer is assembled the same way as the headboard. I recommend assembling the panels of both together and then attaching the posts of both. This saves time since you can cut and drill everything at the same time.

King bed footer with measurements

Making the Bed Rails

Once the headboard and footer are assembled, it’s time to start working on the bed rails. Keep in mind that the 2×6 on top of the footer will extend an inch or more to the inside. I’ve made the bed rails 82” long to accommodate standard king sized mattresses and box springs, however I would recommend measuring yours (if you have them already) to make sure that they will fit. This is the same with the 77” support beams. I’ve created this plan based on standard box spring sizes, but it never hurts to double check your specific mattress and box spring!

Bed rails and supports

The other difference between this and the queen version is that I’ve added additional 9″ supports for the middle of the rail slats.  You can make these using 2 2x4s attached together or you may have enough wood from your 4×4 posts to use for this purpose.

Again, one of the big differences between my plan and the Ana White plan is how I attach the bed rails. In her original plan, the bed rails are permanently fixed to the headboard and footer, but I wanted a bed that can be disassembled with relative ease. Besides, this is a heavy piece of furniture! So instead of bolting the rails to the posts I am using bed rail fasteners. There are a variety of bed rail fasteners available, but I’ve found these heavy duty fasteners (shown in the illustration) work great and enable the bed rails to be attached and disassembled with east. You can find these at a Woodcraft or Rockler store if there’s one near you or you can order them online from Amazon. This does require that you are careful to follow this plan as it relate to the width of the headboard and footer. This goes back to the comments about the 1×8 panels and their actual width of 7 1/4”.

See the queen version post for a detail walkthrough of creating the mortises for these fasteners.  If you don’t want to mess with the mortises for the bed rail fasteners, some other options are these 5″ surface mount fasteners by Rockler or these “no mortise” bed rail fittings.  Both have good reviews on Amazon at the time of this post.  Note that both of these surface mount fasteners have to be mounted on the inside of the bed rails and the 2×4 “shelf” that supports the mattress supports will get in the way.  You can compensate for this by trimming the shelf back from the edges of the 2×8 bed rail boards creating enough space to mount the brackets on the bed rail.

The other technique that might be unfamiliar is cutting notches in the 2×4 for the bed rail supports.  Here’s a brief video demonstration on how to do this.  Don’t forget to use eye protection!

Final Assembly

Here’s another picture of the final plan.  For ideas on finishing, refer back to the last part of the queen bed post series.

King sized version of the farmhouse bed plan

Thanks and if you’ve found this plan helpful or have some additional tips, please leave a comment!

If you like this plan, you can either print out this entire blog post or purchase my PDF print version for $5.

The print version includes a handy shopping list, cut list and lots of diagrams of the project (it’s about 22 pages in all).  You certainly don’t need it to build the bed, but if you want a nicely formatted printout to use in your workshop/basement/garage and to take to Home Depot or Lowes when shopping for supplies, you might consider it.  Note that this is for the king version.  If you’re looking for a queen version, you can get it here.

Ed

You’ve got to be kidding right?  Why would anyone want to read about this?  I mean, last month alone, Pat Flynn made almost $120,000 so who cares about a measly $500?  Most people think that ‘www’ stand for World Wide Web, but I have a special URL where it stand for World’s Worst Website.  Here’s the start of my story.

I’ve been listening to internet guys for a while now, but in kind of a schizophrenic way.  Most of the time my brain telling me that guys like me – boring guys with corporate jobs and families and mortgages – can’t possibly make money online.  I mean really, to be successful, you’ve go to to have blue hair or yell a lot about wine or have a personality that blows people away or just be one of the lucky few.

But then there’s that part of me – the part that keeps listening to these guys – that says maybe, just maybe, there’s something to it.  There’s a lot of people out there who have figured it out to one degree or another.

So if you’re reading this, then somehow you’ve found your way here.  I really have no idea how because I’m a terrible marketer.  That’s probably pretty obvious to you (I’m trying to get better).  This is important because it means that you can, regardless of who you are, get people to read stuff on your website too, if you make one.

Fits And Starts

I love the idea of passive income.  Who doesn’t?  I’ve always been in awe of these folks who identify their niche and come up with amazingly creative ways to monetize it and actually add value to people.  I’ve benefitted from that stuff.  As a wanna be artist, I’m a big fan of Mark Carder and Will Kemp and can tell you from personal experience that the products these guys create are excellent and worth the money.  I wish I could do that!  I love to make some art, but as soon as I finish a project, I’m on to something else.

And that’s my problem!  Way too many interests to stay focused and that’s what you have to do, right?  And because I’m always learning about something new, I’m not usually the expert teaching everyone else.  A perpetual subscriber to other people’s businesses.

But I also can’t help writing about stuff, even if you may be thinking, “This guy’s not really saying anything!”  That’s my point.  WWW.

So I started a WordPress website.  Actually, this is the second website that I started (I built my first with a platform called Joomla) which was a failed attempt at starting a video production company on the side of my day job, but that’s a whole other story.

When you don’t have a niche, as the saying goes, just name it after yourself.  So that’s what I did, and here you have it.  Another exercise that was kind of like my artistic life: something I wanted to learn how to make.  I’m that way with building stuff, playing music and cooking too.

Most people, if they want to start a website, get an account with a hosting company like BlueHost (that’s the one I use now) and use the tools available to quickly create a new site.  But my curiosity won’t let me just click the “one click setup” because I’ve got to figure out how the whole thing works.  The database, the config.php file, FTP clients, all that stuff.  Yep, I spend waaaay too much time in the details.

So I managed to get my website up.  Basic, out of the box WordPress theme.  Just dive in and figure it out as I go along.  Make notes about blog posts that I still haven’t written.  Stare at the blinking cursor in the new post editor…

The Only Smart Thing I Ever Did (and the biggest thing I didn’t do)

Because I was still living in the make believe world of Field of Dreams (if you build it, they will come), I signed up for a Google Analytics ID and put that on my site using a free WordPress plugin called Google Analytics by Yoast.  While they didn’t come by the thousands, they did come by the single digits and having a trend of analytics has been helpful to see what people are actually looking at.

There’s a lot of good info here, but I have found over time that I refer to the JetPack analytics (the stuff that comes with WordPress) more often than the Yoast stats.

I also signed up for Google’s AdSense and installed another plugin called Easy Plugin for AdSense.  I just used the default settings and set 3 boxes to display on post pages.

Here’s the big mistake and I hear others talk about this when I listen to podcasts and read the experts when it comes to online businesses:  I didn’t put anything on the site to collect email addresses.  In hindsight, that was probably my biggest mistake.  Now, keep in mind, I’m really not much of an online business and my advice is worth about as much as you paid for it (unless you clicked an AdSense link and then you probably paid too much!), but based on some recent activity, if I had been collecting emails for a while, I might have a nice little list once I actually figure out what I want my online business to be!

When I came to the realization that I’ve been missing one of the main points of having a website (collection emails so that you can market products & services to your visitors), I added a plugin called Mail Subscribe List.  The thing I didn’t like about this is that after a few months, I had something like 300 emails and they were all obviously spam, with long names and .ru suffixes.

I recently added the list builder & smart bar products from SumoMe.  You probably saw my pop-up already and you can see the smart bar across the top.  In the first couple weeks of installing these tools, I gathered about 7 emails, much to my shock and rather pleasant surprise, and they all appear to be actual human beings.  If I’ve had those tools in place for a year or two, I might actually have a meaningful list.

And that gets me to this really important point which I didn’t really understand, but I’m starting to get now.  If you really want to try to build an online business – either a hobby on the side or an all-in business – it’s all about building your email list.  Trust me on that and don’t make the same mistake I did.

What In The World Do I Write About?

The problem I’m convinced just about everyone has is that first question, “What do I write about?”  Most people finally figure out what they want to say (their niche) and how they want to say it (their voice).  I say most because there’s always going to be ‘that guy,’ in this case me, who still hasn’t figured it out.

I think my first couple posts were interesting quotes.  As if someone’s going to come to my site and read an interesting quote every day.  Like, how many websites out there already do that automatically?  And have I ever go to a website regularly to read a quote?  I rest my case.

About that time I was making a few videos at work and my sister asked me to talk to a group about how to make them.  I thought that might be a good idea for a series of blog posts.  Maybe even an online course.  But no traffic (uh, earth to Ed, no marketing, no traffic…)

It was about that time that I was training for my first marathon.  So I thought maybe people will want to come to my website and read about how I felt and what I thought about when I was running early in the morning.  Yea, I know, another really dumb idea.  And somehow they just keep coming.

My reflections on business (it helps to actually be well known for people to give a rip about your “reflections”).

My smoothie recipes (I still think that one was a good idea!)

Random musings about life (I don’t even think my wife read any of them)

Then I wrote a post about How to Turn a Voice Note on an iPhone into an MP3 and got 9 comments.  Honestly, I didn’t even know I had 9 visitors to my site!  And that got me thinking that there’s interest in how to do stuff, especially stuff that I’m trying to figure out for myself.

My (Not So) Big Break

My not so big break came when I was trying to figure out how to send an HTML email out for a work project.  Because the company was too cheap to pay the subscription fee for MailChimp but perfectionist me wanted to be able have nicely formatted emails, I spent a few nights (well… maybe more than a few) on the internet teaching myself just enough HTML to create some basic marketing emails.  And because I didn’t want to keep doing it myself, I documented everything I did and created a series of articles on How to Create An HTML Email.

The secret sauce in that was that I made a handful of ‘screen capture’ videos showing some of the techniques using a product called Camtasia which was about half the price then of what it is now ($99 at the time of this post) but a great program!  I also included a bunch of images of what I was doing  and for that I found (and still use) a program for Mac called Snapz Pro.  I like it because I can take screen shots of the whole screen, particular open programs or just selections on the screen.  This is helpful when trying to show someone how to do something.

Here’s where I saw my traffic really pick up.  “Picking up” is certainly a relative term.  When you go from 50 visits a day (mostly from people who accidentally clicked a link that took them to my site) to 100 visits a day, that’s an impressive percentage, but not a lot of people.

The other thing I did that was kind of smart (you can count the smart things on one hand; you really can’t count the dumb things!) is that I “monetized” my YouTube videos.  This is basically the same thing as AdSense, but for videos instead of the stuff on my blog.  Suddenly I started seeing a few cents here and there on my AdSense account.  While I initially thought to myself, “Hey, people are actually coming to my site,” the reality was that they were coming to my site, but watching my HTML email videos and clicking on the ads.  My point here is that videos actually work.  I wish that I was creative enough to make some of the really funny viral ones, but people do watch videos that show them how to do stuff.  And they really do click on ads.

The take-away for you is that it’s pretty easy to use screen capture video to educate people on something you’ve developed some knowledge about.  If you are learning how to do something, chances are there’s an audience out there of others who want to learn the same thing.  In my case, I did not do any promotion other than to embed my YouTube videos in my blog posts.  My (little) traffic was 100% organic, however I did finally start to see some AdSense revenue trickle in and that really captured my attention.

I have 2 pieces of advice for you here: Everyone has something to offer when it comes to creating content.  Just pick something and write about it.  Second, figure out a way to make videos.  They drive traffic.

The Black Hole That I Got Sucked In To

Actually, it captured my attention too much.  If you’re reading this, you’ve probably listened to some podcasts or read some success stories.  Ever hear of anyone who made it big with AdSense?  Neither have I!  But that’s not what I thought when I first started to see estimated earnings and pageviews on the AdSense admin screen.  Nevermind that the numbers were all to the right of a decimal point, it was activity and it was mesmerizing.  Between the AdSense page and Google Analytics, my browser was always dialed in and I was checking it like 20 times a day.  If only I spent that time actually coming up with some new content!

Google’s Real-Time Analytics also suckered me in and I found myself bouncing between all of these tools, staring at the screen waiting for people to be live on my site and then checking out where they were, what pages they were looking at, how long they were on the site and generally wasting a ton of time.  It’s pretty addictive!  Problem is that activity is not the same thing as results and while I imagined that the graph of revenue would continue to grow like a hockey stick because my content was so good (ahh… the delusions of a newbie), the fact is that other than the rare day where my revenue hit a few bucks, it was really just a distraction.

It might have made more sense if I actually had a product I was selling or promoting, but for me I spent far more time than I’m sure anyone else did counting pennies.  Fortunately I eventually got to the point where I realized I needed to go cold turkey and detox from analytics.  Even now that I’ve done some more stuff on my site it’s a temptation that I fight against.  I probably need to join an AnalyticsAnonymous group!  My advice to you: Ignore the analytics and focus on creating content!

Affiliate Links

In addition to the challenge of trying to figure out what to write about, is the challenge of time.  I’m convinced that inertia and time are the two biggest obstacles for anyone who wants to create an online business.  The definitely are for me!

Combine the scarce resource of time with my ADD approach to website content and that’s a paralyzing combination.  This is a little besides the point, but I’ll share it anyway.  Since I was thinking about my site a lot, I began to think of ideas of stuff I thought would make a good post. Then I’d forget these great ideas because I either didn’t write them down or I did write them somewhere but forgot where.  Nothing’s more infuriating that having the next greatest idea that was going to go viral and forgetting what it was because it occurred to me in the middle of work (oh the distractions of the day job!).

My solution to this was to start using Google Docs to keep a running list of posts that I wanted to write and “project ideas” for extended posts.  The beauty of Google Docs is that you can access and update from anywhere on any device so you really don’t have an excuse for forgetting the next big idea!

The thing that took my revenue to the next level (which sounds a lot better than it is!) was affiliate links, particularly Amazon Affiliate links.  Here’s how it happened.

I wasn’t a stranger to affiliate links.  Listen to any online business podcast and sooner or later you’ll hear about affiliate links.  While I’m a big believer in them, my site isn’t focused enough on anything in particular (think WWW) to really promote a particular affiliate link.  But that didn’t stop me from trying!

I signed up for affiliate programs through Commission Junction and LinkShare.  Since I had content about HTML email, I used Adobe affiliate links.  For my content on making smoothies I signed up for one with VitaMix (I love mine!).  For my musings about art I signed up for Dick Blick Art Supplies (I pretty much order everything from them).  But the funny thing about affiliate links is that you have to have traffic for them to work.  With the exception of my HTML email tutorials, I didn’t have much traffic.

Then One Day My Dishwasher Broke And Everything Changed

What’s that got to do with anything, you ask?  Well, as you can see from my site today, I like to make stuff, figure stuff out and fix stuff.  So before I spent the $85 just to have someone come to the house, I searched the internet to see if I could figure out how to fix it myself.  While I didn’t find a clear answer, I found enough to be dangerous.  So I took my dishwasher apart and managed to figure out what was wrong with it.  And so I didn’t forget how to put it back together, I took pictures of each step with my iPhone.

The result of that project became one of my most visited and profitable posts.  The reason it’s profitable (“profitable” is a relative term… we’re talking $10s of dollars, not hundreds or thousands) is because of the Amazon Affiliate program.  That was my 2nd game changer (after AdSense).

I ordered the part for my dishwasher from Amazon and fixed it.  Then I wrote a detailed description of how I did it, complete with pictures.  And I added an affiliate link to the part.  Talk about niche marketing!  Turns out, the dishwasher I have looks really nice but is kind of a piece of crap.  And other people, actually a lot of them, have the same problem.

While I was searching online for how to fix it, I ran across a couple DIY forums with various comments about people trying to fix similar problems.  So after I figured it out and wrote my post, I went back to these forums and posted a link back to my article.  And lo and behold, people began finding their way to my site, following my instructions and ordering their part from Amazon.  So, I’ve been able to help quite a few people fix their dishwashers and make a little revenue from showing them how.  If I could get focused, I could probably do more of that!

There are a couple lessons here.  First, once you find your niche, find out where people are talking about your topic.  Hopefully yours will be a little more broad than an LGLDF6920ST dishwasher, but the point is that I found the forums where people with the same problem were and helped them solve it.  That brings me to the second lesson.  Help people solve problems.  Pretty good advice for any business (if only I’d consistently follow it!).

The Thing I Thought Would be Big, But Never Was

Listening to Pat’s podcast, I finally checked decided that I needed to move my website to BlueHost.  I had been using a different hosting provider for a year or so, but had helped some friends get websites set up using BlueHost and preferred the platform and had great experiences with their technical support.  Besides, Pat was a big fan & that carried a lot of weight with me!

I had been wanting to move my website from where I had it to BlueHost for a while.  I was paying for 2 hosting accounts and that was getting old!  So one weekend, I finally committed to moving the site and documenting exactly how I did it.  I did some searching online as I prepared for this and read a good bit of the documentation on the WordPress.org site.  While all the information was there, I felt like there was a need for a detailed walkthrough of the whole process, including all the hosting provider stuff, along the lines of my HTML email articles.  I was certain that this was going to be a game changer!

But it didn’t turn out that way.  Since I published it about a year ago, I’ve had a whopping 60 page views with an average time on the page of 23 seconds.  Clearly a dud.

The takeaway here is this: Just because I think the content is great (I still do, actually!) doesn’t mean that my audience thinks it’s great.

My First Digital Product

Over the first 6 months of this year, between my AdSense revenue and Amazon Affiliate Links I’ve earned a little more than $500 off of this site.  Granted, that’s not much, but I also haven’t done any marketing of my content whatsoever.  There are tons of ways to do that, some of which are free and generally involve social media and some of which are paid, also generally involving social media (see a trend here?).  I’m just starting to try and figure that out and I’ll be glad to share what I learn.  This guy’s already starting to help me out here, just with his free content.

Earlier this year I launched my first digital product tied to what has surpassed my dishwasher post as my most read content.  One of my many hobbies is building stuff and I built a slightly modified version of one of Ana White’s tables.  Again, I detailed my project, took a bunch of pictures and created a post to help people build one for themselves, explaining some of the things in more detail and going over some techniques that I thought would be helpful.  This has become my most read post with over 35,000 views so far this year.

I detailed my project in 2 blog posts that were fairly long.  So a few months ago I got the idea that people might want to have a printable plan, formatted nicely, that they could use to build their own project.  A sort of convenience purchase since blog posts don’t exactly print out that well.

So I created a printable PDF plan – I call it my first eBook! – and, using FetchApp (mainly because I’ve bought other digital products that were fulfilled on this system), I made it available as a part of my project post.  I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts about digital products and “the launch,” but mine was pretty anticlimactic.  It’s a good thing I didn’t hold my breath because it was a couple weeks before someone actually bought one.  But then I sold another, and another and every few days I get another order.  We’re not talking big money here (my plan is only $5 and PayPal takes a cut of every order), but the good news is that I actually created a product and it actually sells… a little.

A little success, even if it doesn’t translate into a lot of money, is really energizing and gets you thinking of new ideas.  So I’m excited to see what can happen in the future.  If I can stay focused and find the time.  My friend Dale Callahan is helping me in this area, particularly as I think through my goals.

So What’s The Point?

The point is that I’m living proof that anyone can earn some money online.  You hear people say it, usually in the context of making phenomenal amounts of money, and might be inclined to dismiss it because it seems like it doesn’t apply to normal, average people.  Don’t fall for that.  First of all, there are no “normal, average” people.  Everyone is unique with your own perspective, experience and interests.  And while it’s true that everyone is indeed completely unique, the world has 7 billion people on it, over 3 billion of which are on the internet.   So it stands to reason that no matter how weird someone feels, there are going to be people you can connect with.  The odds are just in your favor.

Seth Godin talks about tribes.  This is just another way of talking about niche markets.  I believe – and I hope to be living proof that this is the case – that if you write for “you” (instead of trying to be someone you’re not), try to help people and deliver real value and don’t give up, then you’ll eventually attract your own tribe.

I’ll admit that I don’t know exactly who mine is yet, but I’m starting to get some vague ideas. Maybe you’re a part of it.  Maybe not.  But if I can help you with a few tips to get started on your own online journey, encourage you to keep at it, and help you believe that if I can do it then you can too (I have no doubts here), then I’ve delivered some value and that’s what I believe online business is all about.

Thanks for reading,
Ed

I’ve been saving wine corks for as long as I can remember.  I can’t bring myself to throw them away – the natural ones – because I just think they’re cool.  I even find myself picking bottles of wine based on which ones have real corks vs. synthetic.  There’s something tactile and visceral about them that totally intrigues me, from the smell of the wine-soaked end to the elastic resistance I feel when I roll them about with my fingers, to the almost limitless variation of patterns and colors.  And I’m amazed by the fact that cork comes from trees and start out living and organic.

Wine Cork Art Project

My cork collection has grown from a handful of them in a ziplock sandwich baggie to several large grocery bags full.  I’ve been wanting to do something artistic with them for a while, but couldn’t figure out exactly what.  I know I wanted an “impact piece” that would be big and grab guests attention but most of what I found searching Pinterest were either too complicated or too small.

Not sure what multiple bags of corks says about me!

Not too long ago, I was in a bookstore and ran across a wine cork jigsaw puzzle that had the look I was going for and I adapted the design and combined it with my float frame for a piece of contemporary wine art.

I’m in the middle of building 2 companion pieces, but way underestimated the amount of time this would take.  It has gone from what I thought would be a weekend project to a couple month project as measured by an hour here and there on the weekends.  But it’s definitely been a labor of love.  You could finish this a lot faster than I did, but for me it turned into kind of a therapeutic project, a lot like working on a jigsaw puzzle, and I took my time putting it together.

Finding Wine Corks

While I had plenty of corks for this project but if you don’t have a stash, finding them isn’t all that hard.  Like I mentioned above, I’m not bashful about asking for corks.  If I’m at a restaurant that serves wine, I’ll usually ask the waiter if they have any they’d give me.  You should see the looks I get at restaurants when I tell the waiter to leave the cork from the bottle at dinner and then ask if they have any more corks they want to get rid of.  I’ll usually leave with at least a handful.  One sommelier at high end restaurant known for their wine selection gave me a bag with about 75!

Same thing if I’m at a wine shop picking up a bottle.  Wine shops often do wine tastings and have corks laying around.  I’ll even ask my friends and it’s not uncommon to find folks who have a stash of corks saved that they have no idea what they want to do with but they didn’t want to throw them away.

Besides slumming for corks at restaurants and friends’ houses, you’ve got a handful of other options.  Find them on Amazon.com as well as some of the big box craft stores and Bed, Bath & Beyond.  But some of these have different sizes and styles

I recently ran across WidgetCo.com where you can buy used wine corks in bulk.  While I haven’t used them yet since I’ve had enough corks to create my art pieces, I like that they have specific grades so you can get all natural wine corks without the synthetic ones mixed in.

You can also find them on Etsy from a variety of different sellers.

The Most Expensive Part of this Project

The biggest cost in this project (if I discount all the wine I bought over the years to accumulate my corks!) was the glue!  Once I was into the 3rd tube of E6000 (I think I used 4 tubes in all), it occurred to me that this was the project supply I grossly underestimated!  I wish they made this stuff in tubes to fit in a caulk gun.  That would have made the project go a lot quicker!

You’re going to need a lot of E6000! But this stuff is the best.

I read lots of comments from smart crafty people that hot glue and super glue doesn’t work that well with corks, but I can tell you that this E6000 stuff is awesome.  Get it at Home Depot or Walmart or just go ahead and have Amazon send you the 5 tubes (at least) your going to need.

Let’s Get On With The Project!

Rough Sketch of my Cork Art Project

I started out building a float frame (actually 2 of them) using 1×2″ boards to make a frame 20″ x 40″ and a 1/4″ sheet of plywood for the back.  I stained the outside of the frame and painted the inside (including the back panel) black.

Cork Art Wood Supplies

This float frame is a little different from my previous post because I wanted the back panel to actually fit into the frame instead of being nailed to the back.  I had 2 reasons for this.  First, I wanted the frame to barely extend past the corks so it didn’t look so deep.  If I nailed panel to the back of the frame, the face of the frame would be about 1/2″ deeper than the corks.  Also, I didn’t want the frame to eventually pry away from the back although with nails and wood glue, this probably wouldn’t be a problem.

I used a table saw & one of my absolute favorite products, my Freud Dado Blade set, to make 1/4″ dados 1/4″ from the bottom of the frame pieces.  Just a note about the Freud – I went through several cheap dado blade sets before I found this one and it has been the perfect balance of a very clean cut with exact measurements for a reasonable price.

Mitered corners of the float frame

Here’s my Freud blade setup on my table saw:

Here’s my Freud dado blade set up on my table saw.

I mitered the ends of the frame pieces at 45° angles.  If you’re attempting this project or a similar variation and haven’t done miter joints before, I recommend checking out my video on setting up your miter saw.  Often they are marked with angle measurements, but they may not be exact.

I joined the corners with both wood glue and nails.  In this picture, I’m using an Irwin 45° clamp, but honestly I don’t really recommend it.  It gets the job done, but I have to measure the angle with a carpenter’s square after I have it clamped it to make sure it’s a true 45° and inevitably I

have to adjust it a bit.  I haven’t tried the Kreg clamp, but I will probably get one of these soon since every other Kreg product that I have is excellent!

Joining the mitered corners

Here’s a shot of my mitered corner after I’ve painted and stained.

I stained the outside of this project with an Early American MinWax stain and then applied a couple coats of clear satin Polycrylic.

Here’s the finished frame!

I wasn’t too worried about getting the back of the frame painted perfectly since it will be covered up with corks, but the sides that give the “float” look I did spend time on and made 2 coats of black.

The next part was to go ahead and lay out the corks in the frame (actually I also did this during the planning stage before I actually made the frame) to see exactly how many I was going to need.  Notice the spacer wood on the sides, top and bottom.  I kept those in place through the rest of the project to make sure the “float spacing” was uniform.

Lay out the corks to get the pattern you want. Also, use scrap wood for spacers to keep the float spaces uniform.

Now it’s time to start laying down the corks and gluing them in place.  I did the rows one or two at a time and cut the end pieces to fit.  Having all the corks in place (but not glued) when I started the gluing phase really helped to keep things going and keep the corks in order.  Cutting the end pieces was nothing special, but I did do them one at a time and it’s important to use a really sharp razor knife and be super careful not to cut your fingers.  I’m sure there’s a much more safety conscious way to do it!

Here’s where the project got long!  Laying out the corks and gluing them down row by row instead of trying to glue the whole project at once had the benefit of making sure everything laid out nicely and since there’s so much variation in the sizes and width of the corks, I ended up shifting a lot of them around, especially as I got closer to the bottom of the picture.  I’m sure you could do this faster, but as I mentioned above, it got to be kind of relaxing and therapeutic putting it together so I rather enjoyed the process of laying everything out.  You’ll also notice, if you try to do this project, that if you glue more than a couple rows at a time, when you push the corks down to make sure they lay flat and squeeze together, they will tend to twist like gears in a machine or rollers on a conveyor.  Doing a couple rows at a time makes it easier to ensure that the vineyard design stays facing the way you want it to.

Laying down the glue and corks row by row. It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle!

My corks fit pretty snugly in this frame and each time I glued a series of rows, I put a piece of plywood on top and weighed it down to make sure the corks didn’t pop up which they had a tendency to want to do.

Weighing down the corks while the glue dries.

Here’s a shot of the first few rows cut & glued in place:

Here’s another shot after I glued everything down and cut the “end” corks to fit my pattern.

So it took me a long time to get all of the corks laid down, but I finally finished and I think the end result is pretty cool and will look great on the wall.

The Finished Product

Wine Corks on a float frame

All in all it took me 550 corks!  Now, on to building the companion piece for it…

Thanks!
Ed

Now that I’ve gotten her windows replaced and room painted (lots of funky, girly colors), my daughter has been asking for a desk to do her school work. “This will be easy,” I thought, “a couple file cabinets and an old door on its side will be perfect!” Not exactly what she had in mind… ah, the difference between boys and girls…

Her vision, with the help of the internet, was a desk with drawers and a hutch and plenty of cubbyholes for stuff (lots and lots of stuff!).  So with a handful of Pinterest pictures to go on and some reverse engineering, here’s a model of the desk we’re building.

Stay tuned for a cut list… coming soon!

Step 1 – Build the Desk Frame

Build the frame from 3/4″ plywood. Attach the sides and bottom shelf with pocket holes

Make sure that your desk top extends over the sides by 3/4″.

Add the trim, rear support shelf and the cabinet center partition:

Next, cut the cabinet footer from 3/4″ plywood using a jigsaw or band saw (if you have one!).  Attach with nails and wood glue.

For those of you who care, I’ve also created a video of how to draw arcs like this in the 3D modeling software that I use for my plans.

Use finishing nails and wood glue to attach the 3/4″ (3/8″ deep) half round moulding trim around the desktop.

Step 2 – Build the Cabinet Door

There are many different ways to do this depending on the look that you want for the desk.  For ours, we’re using rail and stile construction to build a cabinet door.  The face of the door can be 1/4″ wood panel (in my model) or you could use a glass panel which would look really nice!  Here are the dimensions of the model (constructed to leave a 1/16″ gap between the cabinet door and the drawer faces next to it), however when you are building your project, be sure to measure your cabinet door for the actual dimensions.  Plans are one thing, but as careful as you are, sometimes cuts aren’t exactly the same as in our project plans!

Use your table saw with a Freud Dado Blade Set to cut your dados and make tenons on your rails and stiles as seen in this illustration.

Dado grooves cut into the side of the stiles. Bot rails have dados as well as tenons on the end. All dados are 1/4″ to accommodate the panel.

Cabinet door exploded

Here’s the finished cabinet door with the 1/4″ wood panel in place & outside dimensions:

Lastly, attach the 2 back panels to the desk.

Step 3 – Drawers

This desk has 3 drawers, 2 identical small drawers on top and a large bucket drawer on the bottom.  These can be mounted with your choice of hardware, generally either bottom mount 22″ drawer slide or a full extension ball bearing side mount drawer slide.

The drawers are constructed with 1/2″ plywood frames joined with pocket hole screws and a 1/4″ bottom inset into dado grooves for added support.  I prefer to construct the bottom that way rather than nail to the bottom of the drawer frame, however if you use bottom mount drawer slides and don’t have a dado blade or router, this will keep the drawer bottoms from detaching because the slides will bear the weight.  Also note that there should be 1/2″ clearance on the sides of the drawers so that the slides will fit.

For the drawer construction, first attach 3 sides with wood glue and pocket hole screws.

Slide the 1/4″ bottom panel into the dados.  Dados should be at least 1/4″ from the bottom of the drawer frame.  It will help to slide the panel in if you sand the edges of the drawer panel to make them slightly thinner than 1/4″.  Use wood glue to reinforce the joint.

Attach the 4th side of the drawer with wood glue and pocket hole screws.  Remember, your pocket holes should be on the outside of the drawer, not the inside.

Lastly, attach the drawer face, centering the drawer box with the face and box flush at the bottom.

Assemble the other 2 drawers the same way.

Step 4 – Assemble the Hutch

Attach the hutch top to the sides with wood glue and pocket hole screws.

Assemble the hutch frame

Next, attach the hutch shelves, again with wood glue and pocket holes (on the bottom of the shelves).

Attach the hutch dividers:

Next comes the 1×3″ trim:

Lastly, attach the back panel to the hutch.

The Finished Product!

Finish up with the drawer and cabinet hardware of your choice.

Many financial services professionals shy away from online marketing and one of the reasons I often hear is that they are sales people, not technology people.  I work with financial advisors every day, it almost seems like it’s a point of pride to be ignorant of technology.  I’m a GenXer so I can understand, even if I don’t agree, with the old school perspective, but consumer preferences are rapidly changing and those who are willing to look at where the financial services business is going (as opposed to where it’s been) will be the clear winners in the future. You can stay old school and keep putting that ad in the newspaper, but if you’re not capitalizing on the technology that connects with today’s consumers, you will struggle to attract and retain new clients, particularly GenX, Y and Millennial clients who represent the future of your business (and your revenues!) for years to come.  

In today’s online marketing world content is king.  Actually this has always been the case, but old school sales strategies and techniques, combined with products designed to compete on price, have fooled us into thinking that manipulative sales pitches and power closes are real sales and marketing.  Nothing could be further from the truth and the evidence can be seen in recent studies indicating a whopping 60% of consumers believe financial advisors put their own company’s interests above the clients.

The internet has become the “great leveler” and you can safely assume that your clients and prospects are researching your products and services before, during and after they talk to you.  Are you going to let someone else be the expert that influences their buying decisions and understanding of your products?  You don’t have to.  But to market yourself as a thought leader and influencer will require you to engage in content marketing.  The good news is that you can do it!

Providing your clients relevant and useful online content is a powerful attraction marketing technique and helps to position you as an expert in your field.  Through the use of today’s basic content sharing technologies, you can not only develop and share content that your clients and prospects need, but you can leverage online behavior and automated marketing tools to build a community of clients and prospects and deliver very powerful, targeted marketing campaigns to them that will result in “sticky” relationships and ultimately sales.  But it’s important to remember that the goal that resonates with today’s consumer is education and community, not transactional product sales.  Sure, you can use technology as a purely transactional sales process and you may get sales, but you will not develop clients.  I’m here to help you build long term community and client relationships.  If you just want technology tips to make the next sale, you might as well stop reading here.  While the technologies are new and evolving, the marketing principles are the same regardless of your industry and the products you’re selling.

The primary content sharing strategies are blogs, video and podcasting.  While some business people do all three through an interconnected strategy, each one on its own can be an effective and powerful tool.  If you’re relatively new to building an online strategy for your business, I’d recommend focusing on one strategy and learn to do that well.  Once you begin to build a solid base of visitors, you can easily expand to other strategies so that they compliment one another.

Many advisors and business people think that they don’t have the technology skills to do some of these things.  This is a common misperception and you don’t need to fall into this trap.  First of all, many of the technologies and tools are designed for the technological “lay person” to use.  Think about it.  If I start an email marketing company, am I going to design my product so that only “techies” can use it?  I won’t build a very big business if that’s my strategy!  Today’s blogging, video producing and podcasting tools are powerful and user-friendly and are continuing to get better and better.  Like anything worth doing, there’s always a learning curve and new terms and concepts to understand.  But like learning the basics of financial planning and insurance, once you get these fundamentals and build your basic foundation, you can produce and market content quickly and easily.  Also, today’s digital marketing world is focused on automation.  With many of the tools I will discuss, you’ll put some time in up front, but then your fundamental marketing systems will be on autopilot and you won’t have to think about it.

For example, suppose you’re a retirement income planning expert and you sell annuities.  Let’s also suppose you’ve taken the time to develop an online presence either on a website, blog or social media group like Facebook or LinkedIn.  You’ve develop a regular habit – we’ll call it a business process – of generating and sharing informative content, tailored to the needs and concerns of your clients, to help ensure that they don’t run out of money during their retirement years.  Furthermore, you’ve developed this content in such a way that your clients can easily share it with their friends, family and connections.  They – and others – interact with your content, that is, they link back to your website, read your articles on Facebook, watch a video that you shared or even produced yourself (you can do it, I promise!).  And that’s where the magic happens.

You know what pages or content they are looking at because you’ve been smart about using analytics tools related to your content.  Maybe they read a blog post about understanding Social Security.  You present them with the opportunity to to download a free Social Security Fact Sheet and access to an online planning tool in exchange, of course, for their email address.  Being the smart marketer you are, you have tools in place to send them a series of personalized emails highlighting gaps around Social Security and Medicare when considering retirement income.  Their interest is piqued.  Your first marketing email has identified a problem and your subsequent emails are agitating it.  Each communication has a call to action, namely schedule a free, no obligation consultation.  All they have to do is click a link, pick a time and schedule an appointment.  You get an email that you have an appointment.  They get a follow up email with a checklist of items to bring with them to the meeting and maybe even include a downloadable data gathering form that you’d like them to complete.  And up to this point, you haven’t had to do anything at all, but write and share some content.  And maybe you even got most of that from a wholesaler.

Not only do these systems work, but you will be surprised to find out how inexpensive and easy to use they are, if you put in a little work up front and build systems that act like sales funnels, directing clients to the outcomes you want.

According to LinkedIn, financial professionals are among the most active groups of LinkedIn users. Chances are that you already have a LinkedIn profile, but chances are also pretty good that it’s not optimized for professional contacts with potential clients and referral sources.

LinkedIn is not a resume. Well, it kinda is, but it really isn’t. The world has changed a lot since Monster.com and LinkedIn is more about developing a personal brand and marketing than it is about posting your resume and trying to find a job. This is important and if you don’t get it, then you are missing out on an extraordinary networking and prospecting opportunity. Think of it as a marketing platform for your business.

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile

Here are some basic tips and techniques to get the most out of your LinkedIn profile. These may sound basic, but just cruise around your contacts for a while and you’ll see that having an optimized profile sets you apart from the majority of users.

Upload a professional photo. This may sound a little basic, but choose a picture that actually looks like you. Since LinkedIn is generally regarded as a more professional social media site, you should use a more professional photo. That means a headshot of you dressed for work.

Use your personal Facebook page to highlight your hyper-individualism. That’s what it’s for. But unless you are marketing yourself with a personal brand based on your individualism (and you know it works off line!), then stick to a professional picture, cropped at the shoulders with your face taking up ⅔ of the square (LinkedIn headshots are square). Take care not to use a distracting background so your potential clients can clearly see you. Don’t use that blurry low-resolution photo from 10 years ago! You may not care that much about your picture, but first impressions count online. Look like you’ve been there before.

Reinforce your brand with a custom background. This is the space behind your profile header and stretches across the width of the computer screen and you have the option of choosing from a handful of default images provided by LinkedIn or you can create your own. This image will also show up when viewing your profile on a mobile device and can make your profile stand out, simply because most people don’t take the time to change it. The custom background image size is 1400×425 pixels and when coming up with an image, keep in mind that your profile header will take up a large area in the middle of it. This is, however, a place to draw attention to aspects of your brand, whether it’s your logo or imagery consistent with your marketing. Ideally, the image should provide continuity with your website.

Write a compelling headline. The headline is the text right below your name and is arguably the most important item on your profile. Most people simply put their title there, as if anyone cares. LinkedIn is not a resume! The headline is a 120 character opportunity to describe how you help people and is the first step towards engaging your community.

Most of you have probably heard of the concept of the ‘elevator speech.’ Your headline is the LinkedIn version of your opening statement. Here’s where you introduce people to what you do for them (not your title). A brief statement of who you help and how you help them. Do you call yourself an “Insurance Agent” or are you known as a “Financial Advisor Helping People Achieve Financial Freedom?” Get creative, but not so creative that people can’t tell what you can do to help them or their connections.

Add your contact information. You’d be amazed by how many people don’t do this!  What good is a compelling headline & professional picture if people can’t get in touch with you? Well, they can send you a connection request, but you want LinkedIn to work for you from a marketing standpoint. Add your contact information so your connections can reach you by phone, email and social media. Keep in mind that this information is generally only seen by your connections (people with premium and Sales Navigator accounts can also see this information).

Right next to your contact information is a customizable URL. Completing this will do a couple things for you. First, it’s a link that you can put in your personal marketing material and on a business card. Second, you can use it on your site or in emails or electronic communication to direct people back to your profile. Thirdly, it will make it easier for search engines to include you in results. Choose a custom URL that matches your name as closely as possible.

While in your contact information, don’t miss the Twitter and website links. Everyone viewing your profile can see these links and this can be a referral source for your website, particularly a custom landing page specifically designed to convert LinkedIn referrals, for example a call to action and a downloadable e-book, a podcast feed or your YouTube channel. LinkedIn gives you options for multiple links and the ability to choose an “other” option so you can control the text introducing your link.

What about Endorsements? This is an area where there are differing opinions from experienced marketers about whether to include or not. If you’re a registered securities rep, that decision has been made for you by your broker-dealer and the general rule is you can’t include them. The important thing is that they are customizable, so if you choose to include your endorsements, you can curate them around the specific services that you are marketing. Here’s the thing about endorsements: all experienced LinkedIn users know that anyone can endorse you for anything, so they are not a “real credential” and their value is marginal. You may be inclined to think that this is a place where clients can endorse you for a particular skill, but there’s really a much better place for that…

…And that brings us to recommendations. This is the one area of LinkedIn that many people are hesitant to use, but it is a powerful marketing tool. For advisors, this is where you want to ask your clients for testimonials on how you’ve helped them. LinkedIn changes things around from time to time, but as of this writing, you can access the recommendations areas by hovering your cursor over the down arrow next to the “view profile as” button on your profile page. Select “ask for a recommendation,” pick a contact and write them a personalized email. Those giving you recommendations have to have LinkedIn accounts. I like to ask clients and associates in person after I’ve delivered them some value and then followup with a LinkedIn email request. Again, if you are a registered rep, your ability to utilize recommendations may be restricted, so check with your broker-dealer’s social media policy.

If your headline is the most important item, your summary is next in line. This is where you tell your story. And this is where most LinkedIn users lose their audience. Because they don’t show up. Instead, some boring one-dimensional clone shows up and kills any chance to further engage your audience. But that’s not you. You have a story to tell that you’re passionate about and makes a difference in people’s lives. Think of your headline as the teaser and your summary as the full preview, condensed into a couple paragraphs (you yourself are the show!). The summary is not a place to re-hash your current job description. This is where you communicate, in real human language, who you are, what makes you unique and how you’re making a difference in the world. Think about it from the perspective of your prospects and clients. What would make them want to talk further with you?

This may sound a little basic, but make sure that your education, background and experience is up to date. While LinkedIn is not a resume, it is important to show your career continuity. This is where some basic resume tips are useful, but with a marketing spin since your goal is marketing, not job-seeking. One of the most basic ones is do not load your experience section with arcane detail and corporate-speak. Keep it results focused and tell viewers how you added value to the people and organizations you’ve been associated with. This is also a place to make sure you are using “key words” that describe what you do (and that people actually understand and search on!).

Your experience section as well as your summary are great places to add rich media. What is rich media? I’m glad you asked. This is content that you’ve developed as part of your content marketing strategy that is designed to add value, drive potential customers to your website and build your email list. Next to your headline and summary information, this is LinkedIn’s most valuable marketing tool and also the most overlooked one.

Rich media can be anything that you’ve developed and it can be targeted based on what you’ve put in your profile as far as education and experience. For example, this can be links to videos or presentations that you’ve made (for a great resource for sharing presentations, check out SlideShare) or downloadable files such as white papers or ebooks. Personally, I recommend sharing videos and presentations that direct people back to your site or to a “lead page” where prospects can then download value added content in exchange for their email address.

Round out your profile with additional Profile Sections such as projects you’ve done, organizations you are involved in, causes you care about and volunteer activities help make your online persona more personal. These areas will also enable you to use keywords in the descriptions that will help you show up in search results around affinity groups where you may have more than just a professional connection. This is an area where you can highlight specific competencies that you have or marketing programs that you’ve developed for your clients and prospects.

Summary

Even though today massive amounts of people are on LinkedIn, many of them still think of LinkedIn as a glorified resume and they are using LinkedIn as a search engine to find people. That means we’re still at the front end of the curve when it comes to using LinkedIn as a marketing tool (translation: Opportunity!). LinkedIn is one more piece of your overall integrated content management strategy and in future posts, I’ll show you how to connect content marketing tools to your various platforms to automate your marketing efforts.

Do you think you know your customer?  Think again!  One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is assuming that you know who your customer is and what they want.  The fundamental cornerstone of any content marketing strategy, regardless of the industry, is delivering value to your prospects and clients, but how do you know what’s valuable to them?  The obvious answer, but the one that is widely ignored, is to ask them.

Whether you’re serious about a content marketing strategy that attracts new prospects or you simply want to engage with your book of business and develop new sales opportunities, surveying your clients is one of the most effective ways to gather information.  However, if you’re like most business owners, you’ve tried this before and been disappointed.  Most likely, you’ve tried several formats for surveys and, while you may have gleaned a couple good ideas from time to time, you probably haven’t gotten the engagement and insight that you wanted.  But you’ve probably heard of others that have built entire (and successful) marketing programs around feedback they’ve received.  So what’s up?

First, get your head around talking to people about their needs.  This is something that should be self evident, but that we rarely do!  Amazingly enough, it’s sometimes a revolutionary concept to think about tapping into the power of our existing book of business.  Sure, we think of them as referral sources and annual review sales opportunities, but we often overlook mining them for the specific purpose of develop marketing campaigns that can result in cross-selling opportunities and content marketing strategies to attract new clients. Once we get our head around that, it’s time to talk technique, the thing that can make or break your surveys.

Technique is everything!  With the growth of online surveys and the development of easy to use tools, there is an entire science to surveying prospects and clients.  Effective engagement and community development in the online world generally starts with surveys.  And surveys start with an email list of clients and prospects.  Building your email list is a topic unto it’s own, so in this post, I’m assuming you’ve followed my recommendations and not only have your lists, but you have the tools in place to automatically grow it.

What we’re here to talk about is conducting surveys that reveal client and prospect insights that you can then use to market your services and do so using language and benefits that specifically speaks to their needs.  And I’m here to teach you to avoid the 2 mistakes that you will probably make when you do your surveys!  They are #1 – assuming you know what your customers need and #2 – constructing a biased survey.  Even when you think you’re not doing these things, you probably are.  That’s why you’re not getting the insights that you want and should be getting.

I am indebted to Ryan Levesque for his incredible resource, the Ask formula, that lays out the principles behind get your clients and prospects to tell you exactly what they are looking for.  And the starting point for gathering this information and building a segmented marketing plan is what he describes as the “deep dive” survey.  This is what I want to concentrate on because it’s foundational to your content marketing strategy.

Technique #1: Ask the Right Questions

We tend to approach surveys with a particular goal in mind: what does my customer want?  Henry Ford is credited with answering, “if I asked what people wanted, they’d say faster horses.”  More recently, Steve Jobs said “people don’t know what they want until they see it.”  Especially in financial services, many consumers don’t even know what problems they have because they aren’t sitting around thinking about dying, becoming disabled or how tax laws may affect their estates or business succession planning.  The key to successful surveys, whether I’m surveying you or you’re surveying your customers, is to find out what people don’t want and why.

Most surveys are constructed in such a way that they lead people to specific, biased answers instead of giving them the opportunity to express their own needs.  Even when we ask open ended questions, they are often written poorly and may come at the end of a series of concrete options with an “other” field.  The problem with this is the anchoring effect.  You’ve introduced answers that will cause the responder to subconsciously limit their responses, even though that wasn’t your intention at all.

Your cornerstone question, the most important one you’re asking, is the “What’s your biggest challenge? [with market clarification]” question.  This is an open ended question designed to uncover your clients pain points and concerns, which in turn will be the building blocks for your own marketing.

The ‘market clarification’ helps you provide a frame of reference for the respondent.  You can choose how narrow you want that frame to be, but be careful to narrow it too much or you will bias your results.  For example, if I were surveying you, I might ask, “what’s your biggest challenge in acquiring new clients right now?”  That’s a very different question than “what’s your biggest challenge in your financial services business right now?”  I’d ask you the former if I’m selling lead generation services or the latter if I’m a brokerage firm and looking to add non-commoditized value to my producers.

You might ask, “what’s your biggest challenge to having financial peace of mind right now?” or “what’s your biggest challenge in your financial life right now?”  Think about that.  You’re probably not going to hear someone say, “finding the right universal life coverage,” but what you do hear will give you great insight into what they’re really concerned about.

Technique #2:  Ask the Right People

If you already have a book of business and an email marketing list, you’re already a step ahead of the game.  Remember that the deep dive survey is all about research.  The answers will help you segment your clients and prospects into different groups which will enable you to more effectively market to them.  This is an iterative process by which you continually segment your clients and develop multiple “avatars” or ideal clients.

For example, it’s easy to think in terms of retirees and business owners.  Or doctors and young families.  Each of these have a unique set of needs.  But you will find that you can go much deeper than that and the more you identify the niches you serve, the more you build expertise in those areas.  Female entrepreneurs with small children will have different concerns and needs for financial products and services than widows with estate planning needs.  And they will speak in different terms.

If you already have a book of business that you can segment based on general categories, you can send separate surveys to them, getting you even better insight.  The “biggest challenge” question can be framed differently to business owners vs. non-business owners, giving you deeper insight and accelerating your sales funnel development.

Technique #3:  Narrow Your Focus

Most surveys, and I’m sure that you’ve taken your fair share of them, cover way too much ground.  They betray the underlying assumption that we’ve got one shot at getting information, so we better ask everything.  Instead, look at your deep dive survey as step 1 in a process-driven approach that includes follow up surveys and automated marketing campaigns.

The purpose of your deep dive survey is to start a process of engagement.  It is not an end in and of itself!  We are identifying the responsive clients and prospects and laying the groundwork for additional, follow-up, client engagement surveys.  Your initial deep dive survey should be be focused around one main purpose and that is identifying the client’s pain points and struggles, so that we can tailor marketing campaigns and ultimately services around meeting needs.  This is a fundamental mindset shift!  The goal is meeting needs and adding value, not selling products.  Most of us know this intellectually, but in practice you’d think we totally forgot.

Technique #4:  Ask Questions in Decreasing Order of Importance

Many surveys ask too way too many questions and often organize them by topic.  Here’s the truth about online surveys: many people don’t complete the survey.  They may give it a start because you’ve delivered them some value and they want to help and want to be heard, but the minute they feel bogged down, they abandon the survey.  It’s a lot easier to close the browser tab than it is to deal with the stress of answering too many questions or thinking too hard.  In keeping with narrowing your focus, ask fewer questions and ask your most important ones first.

That’s why we start with the “biggest challenge” question.  All other questions in this initial survey will revolve around helping us to segment our responses in to client “buckets.”  These buckets will then determine how we develop our marketing plans.  I want you to hear me loud and clear on this.  Our goal is to determine how we address clients needs with our services using their language.  With this information, we may simply change the way we tell our story depending on who we’re targeting or we may introduce new products that meet specific needs.

Technique #5:  Ask One Question Per Page

If you’re using a tool like SurveyMonkey, the magic of asking one question per page is that once the responder has clicked the “next” button, you’ve captured the data.  That’s why we ask our single most important question first and why it’s the only question on the page.  That way, if your clients or prospects decide they don’t want to complete the survey and abandon it, even after you’ve carefully optimized it, you will still have the most important information.

Technique #6:  Combine Demographic Questions To Segment Your Answers

Your deep dive research survey is the focal point of your marketing plan.  Remember, this is just one step in a broader marketing strategy and the results will be the basis by which you segment your clients and develop a sales funnel for each client type.  That’s the goal right?  Identify your ideal client avatar, determine their needs and struggles, develop marketing materials that show how you can meet their immediate needs, enable them to realize their financial dreams and give them peace of mind.  Then create a sales funnel to get them in the door and converted to clients.

So it’s only marginally helpful to know your client’s hot-buttons if you don’t know much about them.  For example, if I’m surveying advisors that I may potentially work with, I know the majority of my respondents will be men, because that matches the demographic of the industry.  But I also know that female and millennial advisors are huge opportunities for my business to serve in the future.  So doesn’t it make sense that’s I’d like to know, from my survey responses, their particular feedback?

Following up your “biggest challenge: question with a series of easy to answer demographic questions is essential to segmenting your prospects.  This also helps to ensure that you get as much information as possible on your survey when your respondents don’t have the think too hard.  A good format for the demographic questions is, “The following best describes me:” and then present them with a series of categories.  This is where you generally want to add an “other” free form text field.  Again, one question per page so you save those results!

Technique #7:  Don’t Give Away Incentives

This one is hard for many marketers to grasp, but the reason is simple.  If you give away a $10 Starbuck’s card, for example, you’re biasing your results toward the people who want free coffee and are giving your survey just enough to get it.  If you do want to give away an incentive, giveaway downloadable value added content such as an ebook or personal financial checklist that will help you market your services.  Make your incentive work for you, not against you!

Do I Ask For Personal Information?

In short, yes.  But do it at the end and make it obviously optional.  I suggest asking for their name, email address and phone number.  You can ask something like, “I would love to follow up with you personally to find out more about your feedback.  If you’d be willing to schedule 5 to 10 minutes to discuss your feedback on the condition that I promise I will not try to sell you anything, please leave your name and phone number.”  Depending on how you frame your questions, your feedback may be narrow or all over the board.  Depending on the level of responses you get, you may want to have an assistant help you with calls, but there is no substitute for talking to real people!  Make sure you honor your commitment not to try and sell them anything.  You’ll do that with your follow up marketing campaign that invites them to schedule an appointment!

Getting your survey out there

This ought to be common sense, but I’ve seen too many people make this mistake: Don’t just send your survey to your lists.  They won’t know what hit them and they won’t participate.  We call that spam.  Hopefully, if you’re at the point where you are ready to conduct a survey, you’ve been doing some content marketing and have an email list.  If you don’t have a list, then you need to build one and there are tools and techniques to do that which I cover elsewhere.  You will want to send a personalized email invitation to participate in the survey using a email marketing tool like MailChimp.  I discuss automated email marketing tools in much more detail in Email Marketing for Financial Advisors.