Are Cutting Boards Overdone?

Here’s 37 other ideas for fun and profit!

Google Search results for Cutting Boards – 513,000,000

Are cutting boards are overdone and reached market saturation as the professional marketers say? There are tons of options for woodworking projects for beginners and the only one I would cross off the list right now are cutting boards if you’re planning to try and make a few bucks. I see cutting board videos everywhere, I see people selling them at fairs and online for really low prices. I stopped and talked with a couple of vendors selling them at local fairs and they weren’t seeing a lot of traffic.

Going back to the videos, YouTube is just completely saturated with how to make cutting board videos. I did a Google search that simply said, “making cutting boards”, and I got 1/2 a billion results.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of really talented people out there doing some really cool boards. In fact, I bought one for my daughter as a gift on our last vacation. But with so many spectacular cutting board options out there, which there are literally thousands, shouldn’t there be better ideas for personal gifts, small home improvements and simple projects to improve your woodworking skills? So why not look for some options that are just a little bit more unique?

Where to start

I’m a beginner too, so I started thinking about easy woodworking projects you could do instead of making cutting boards either for fun, for your home, gifts or profit. I think a quick look around your home will give you great ideas that would enhance your home or someone else’s and add some convenience to your life.

Starting small projects is the best way to get better making small mistakes instead of large expensive ones. There are many different types of woodwork projects that you can do, and they are often easy to make. This article will provide some great tips on how to get started with woodworking projects that are easy, inexpensive and will give you a sense of accomplishment.

The easiest woodworking projects are those that are not too complicated and can be done with a minimal amount of skill. The best projects for beginners are the ones that do not require a lot of complicated tools, but just the ones you already have.

Before beginning this journey, you might want to brush up on your woodworking skills by looking for woodworking classes online or woodworking classes near me. We actually created the HobbyHack App to solve some of those problems for you. So instead of searching for woodworking classes near me you can join our app and start off with the basic skills of building small woodworking projects. Our first couple of levels will train you in some of the basic joinery skills that you’ll need to make your project stand out.

You can check out some of our other blogs here:

Beginner woodworking projects

The following list contains some easy woodworking projects for beginners, and I organized them according to spaces around the house. For each project there are dozens of options, and you can search on Pinterest and Etsy for styles that you think you can handle and then YouTube and figure out hope to do it. I added some commentary to a few of these options based on my personal experiences as a novice woodworker.

With any of these ideas if you could come up with a creative design, that’s repeatable, inexpensive and you can build quickly after a few tries. You might be able to make some nice side money from your woodworking hobby. Again, make sure you have the right skills for the projects you decide to take on. If you do search for woodworking classes online to help you with skill improvement there’s lots of options out there but our HobbyHack app will teach them to you in the right order.

So here you go, a nice list that you can choose from:

Kitchen

A book stand that you can use in the kitchen to hold cookbooks open.

Small wine racks that you can either hang on the wall or set on top of a shelf. – Anything to do with wine could be a good seller. In these pictures I modified an old entertainment cabinet and turned it in to a liquor cabinet. I did sell it but not for much of a profit.

Lazy Susan – I think this is a little advanced and you’d have to buy the hardware to make it turn.

A small coffee bar for an unused corner in your kitchen – Coffee, another favorite consumable. A creative design for something like a Keurig holder should have a lot of interest.

Vegetable Bins for the pantry – I looked in our kitchen pantry and we just have a couple of small cheap wire bins that we use for potatoes and onions. This would be a great little project to do something for yourself, as a gift or for profit. If you could come up with a creative design that’s repeatable, I think this is something people would buy.

Drawer dividers for kitchen utensils – This one sounds simple but might be a little complicated, only because you would have to use pretty thin wood, and it would have to stand up to a little bit of a beating. But definitely something a beginner could do.

Serving trays – Very similar to cutting boards but adding some handles and just changing the size would make this gift a little different.

Napkin holders

 Closets

Upper Shelf Cubicles or different shapes like Hexagons – I looked in my closet and things are just piled up on the top shelf. You could really add a lot of personal flair to a project like this but yet keep it simple by building stylish boxes. Stack them up on one another, or even create vertical bins let go from the top of the ceiling down to the shelf. This is a project I think I’m going to do this winter to improve the organization in our closet. This could be resold with a customization option.

General Home Décor

Picture frames – Picture frames are great way to building your skills on a miter saw. I’ve done quite a few of these but I still make mistakes, so I have to go back and redo a few things here and there. But in the end, these are fun projects and they look great once you finish them and put them in your home. Here’s one I did for a recent project that was a gift for some friends, I used some very old Teak Wood we found at a junk store and cleaned it up:

Candle Holders – You’ve seen these projects where you can place two or three candles that come on decorative containers.

Coat racks – These could be very cool decorative projects for entry ways, garages, mud rooms, etc.

Small stools – I just did one of these and they are a project requirement in Level 2 of our HobbyHack app. I did this one on the picture to practice Mortice and Tenon joinery, so this particular design would not be easy to produce. But this one did help with my joinery skills for sure. 14 M&T joints in this one!

Plant stands – This could be something that could be reproduced or come up with a 100 different styles that could be sold at fairs or on Etsy.

mirror frames – I did a couple of these for our bathroom used epoxy resin for coloring for the first time. I’ll just tell you I went a little overboard on mixing the colors because I was having so much fun.

Small decorative storage boxes – These are good to use your joinery skills as a design item that will make these boxes stand out.

Wall Shelves – Simple wall shelves are great projects and floating shelves, the ones that don’t show supports underneath are very popular. I added these to our home with some built in LED lighting and used a French cleat to hang them.

Doggie Bed Frame – I think this idea could be a big seller. Make a small, medium, and large version and put a nice dog bed inside of it. People spend a lot of money on their pets, and this could be a stylish addition to a home instead of just throwing a dog pillow on the floor. I might try and come up with something this winter.

A wall mounted mail and key holder

Small Lamps – This might be a little advanced for the beginner but if you have some basic DIY electric skills this could be a niche that not a lot of people are doing.

Basic or wall mounted desks – Again, this fad may have passed with the whole work at home thing but there is still a big portion of the population that’s still working from home.

Porch and outdoor decoration

Small outdoor tables – Huge creative outlet. This could be big for apartments with balconies, the suburbs where people spend a lot of time in the back yards, or rural communities where a front porch is a family gathering place.

Planter boxes – See small outdoor table descriptions. There two items could be big sellers with the right approach.

Garden

Bird feeders

Vertical planter boxes

Living Room, Family Room

Tabletop TV stand – Add other devices underneath the TV or just somewhere you can hide all the cables. Don’t see this as a big seller because there are so many different electronic configurations, but nice addition to your home or as a gift for a family member.

Small side tables – This is a level 3, or apprentice project in our app. I built this one before starting the app learning program and hope to do another, more complicated one as I improve my skills.

Magazine racks – There are becoming obsolete are they!

Blanket holder ladder – These can be pretty cool and simple to make. Might be an impulse buy for folks that like to wrap themselves up in a blanket while watching TX or reading – like my wife!

Dining Room

Tabletop decorations – This might be for the more artistic and creative (which will be the focus of an upcoming blog).

Napkin rings – This could be a good seller, especially with the holidays coming.

Simple serving table – Have something like this under construction as I write this

Bedrooms

Headboards – These could actually be pretty simple to make and adding color to inexpensive wood could be an eye catcher

Small benches for the foot of your bed – Advanced

Shoe racks – I have these down for the bedroom thinking about bedroom closets but there are a lot of cultures that remove outdoor shoes when entering the home. So there’s lots of options for creativity for entryways, mudrooms and garage motives.

Workshop

How many different items could you build here? You may not be able to sell these but it’s always fun to improve our own work environment

Organizing trays or bins for your workshop

A child’s first tool box

About me

I’m not a woodworking expert and don’t pretend to be. I consider myself to be a beginner and have only been doing woodworking for 3 years starting right before the pandemic. I started HobbyHack because when I went to learn and searched for woodworking classes near me and online woodworking, I couldn’t make those scheduled classes or commit to a series. I wanted to create a self-help tool that started off with the right basics and progressed through projects that build the right skills. Try the HobbyHack app for yourself.

Also check out these sites for other project ideas for beginners:

https://www.familyhandyman.com/list/surprisingly-simple-woodworking-projects-for-beginners/

https://www.sawinery.net/blog/woodworking-projects-for-beginners/

https://www.pinterest.ca/

 – Wood Ideas for Home