DIY Gifts for Kids

We had an old coffee table that Russ had built when he was a teenager. It moved provinces with us, but was still sitting in storage. The coffee table was built well, and made of hardwoods, but wasn’t a design that we could ever see being incorporated into our style or rooms anytime in the future. To preserve the memory of his coffee table, we decided to cut it down and use the wood to create 3 new gifts (actually 5 new gifts… but we’ll get to that later!).

We really wanted the gifts to be something that our kids would play with now, but hopefully keep forever. For our youngest son, we decided to build a toy car. Russ had always wanted to build one because his father had built one for him once too. 

For our daughters, we decided to build them a beautiful, handcrafted box that can be used as a memory box in the future, but right now would be used to store craft supplies that fit each of their interests. 

Russ spent a week building the gifts, using fun tools and beautiful dovetail joinery, and then grabbed our FLEXiO 3500 paint sprayer for all of the finishing. The greatest thing about the FLEXiO 3500 is its versatility. We used it to spray stain, to spray paint, and to spray the protective top coat! The pieces had many intricate grooves, corners, and details that the spray gun was able to quickly and easily get into with just one solid coat. 

With how quick and easy it is to clean the paint sprayer, it just made sense to use it for all of these jobs, give it a rinse, and move onto the next gift. The finishing went very quickly, and all three projects looked amazing.

We promised to share the reactions of our kids, so stayed tuned to our YouTube channel, Lindi & Russ, because it’s coming this week! We also shared the full build from start to finish, and continued to use the leftover scrap wood from the same coffee table for our DIY gifts for each other! Check it all out on our YouTube channel, Lindi & Russ.