Oh hey guys! Welcome to Day 6 of the 12 Days of Christmas series! To keep up with all of our Christmas projects, make sure to Follow us on Instagram!
I love how this next project turned out! This is a gift I made for my little sister this year. It took me under 30 minutes to build and makes a perfect gift or entertaining piece for the holidays! Here is how my DIY wood tray turned out…
DIY $8 Wood Tray!
The best part of this project… Price baby! The cost of wood was under $4 and the handles I chose were under $4 for the pair. $8 total… Love it even more.
Let’s get started!
DIY $8 Wood Tray Supply List
1 – 1 x 4 x 8 furring strip
1 – 1 x 3 x 8 furring strip
2 cabinet pulls
Gorilla Wood Glue
Start by making your cuts!
Next, I lined up all my 1×4 boards like this…
I added a line of Gorilla Wood Glue to each side before I attached my top boards.
I used my very favorite tool on this next part! I attached the top pieces with 1 1/4″ brad nails using my Ryobi AirStrike Nail Gun. This thing is the BOMB. It uses the same battery as my drill and requires no air compressor or cords… Too legit peeps. I would totally wink at Santa as you add this to your Christmas list gals…. 😉
So, at this point your tray will look like this.
I decided to give my tray a distressed finish. This is a super easy 2-step process that starts with wood stain. I stained the tray with Rust-Oleum Wood Stain in Carrington. After it dried it looked like this…
After that was totally dry, I spray painted the entire thing with Rust-Oleum Heirloom White Spray Paint.
Now for the fun part… Once the spray paint was totally dry, I used my Ryobi Corner Cat sander to sand through the white paint to reveal the stained wood under it.
The finished product will look a bit like this…
So cute! So easy!
My final step was adding my cute little handles. I found mine at Hobby Lobby!
Here it is all finished up on my table before I give it to her…
These are so fun! They make great gifts and would also work great for serving your guests this Christmas.
And again… $8. Enough said. 🙂
Thank you so much for stopping by!! I would love for you to share this tray and PIN it with your friends below!
Also, be sure to check out all of the other great 12 Days posts from our friends!
Have a great day and we will see you tomorrow!
In case you missed our previous 12 Days of Christmas posts, catch-up below!
Day 1 – DIY Blanket Ladder
Day 2 – DIY Bow Picture Frame
Day 3 – DIY Stocking Holders
Day 4 – Picture Frame Ornament
~Whitney
I can’t wait to give this a try, ty so much ?!!!
Does it make a difference if you staple the cross wood from the bottom as opposed to the top? Just thinking from the bottom you wouldn’t see them. I just don’t know how it would hold up and if there is a reason for staying from top for this reason. Thanks
Beautiful! I am in the process of making one, but the stain does not look like yours. Did you mix your stain with anything? Thank you so much. I love this.
How do you attach the handles? The drawer pulls I can find locally, the screws are too short to be screwed in through the bottom
Hi, I actually have used drawer pulls on trays and gone thru the bottom. Made larger holes big enough for the screw head to fit , dropped in the screw and tightened through to the handle. had to do this as I purchased some nice handles but didn’t realize they screwed from underneath so had to figure it out and this worked.
Do you put some sort of seal on the try so you could serve food on it? If so what kind?
I am so glad I ran across this post! I have been wanting a nail gun for months now and the AirStrike is perfect, i’m adding it to my Christmas list now! I was wondering though whether yours is the 16 or 18 gauge?
If the 1×3 boards lay across 4 of the 1×4 boards – wouldn’t it have to be 16″ long instead of 14″? Please advise. I want to make these for Christmas for my sisters. ????
A 1×4 is actually only 3.5″… so that would be 14″ 😉 But, I would measure them laid out to be exact!
Thank you so much for explaining that to me and for this project info!!
: )
Have a Merry Christmas!!
You bet! Merry Christmas to you too!❤️❤️
Do you need to seal it with anything so that the white paint does not chip or scratch?
What color is your table! I love it!
question is the clear jug a gallon jug?
It’s an apple cider jug… Not sure on the exact size but I would guess a gallon.
i want to buy one from you 😉
Love trays. I think even I can make this one.
Super cool! I am a tray girl and love using them as one big coaster for drinks. This does look easy!