Building a personal cornhole set (Part 1)

Hello all, this is the first post of my crafting blog. I'm Jerrod and I am a law student but in my free time I have recently started to enjoy passing time by creating fun projects where I get to use my hands and play with tools (stuff that one doesn't often do in my professional background). After doing quite a few of these projects I thought it might be helpful to others to share the instructions to some of my more useful crafts. In addition I would not consider myself to be particularly handy or clever so these are definitely projects good for the average joe without much of a mechanical background. So on the first project:

I'm getting married in October and my fiance and I decided to have a non-traditional wedding. Instead of an evening wedding with a DJ and dancing we are going to do an afternoon garden party with lawn games. One of Katie and I's favorite diversions is playing cornhole (also known in some parts as bags) and so we have the object of this project, to create custom cornhole boards for our wedding.

A regulation cornhole board is two feet wide by four feet long, with the back end twelve inches off the ground and the front edge three inches high. The hole is six inches in diameter centered nine inches from the back of the board.

Here's what you're going to need:

Materials
4 2x4s
2 2'x4' sheets of plywood or MDF
Wood screws (I used 18 per board, 36 total, but this can vary based on how sturdy you want the table)
8 carriage bolts, washers, and nuts

Tools
Drill and various bits
Miter saw
Jig saw
Screwdriver
Clamps (not required but helpful)


You are going to need to cut the 2x4's into four 48" pieces (the sides), four 21" pieces (the top and bottom), and four 16" pieces (the legs). I had Home Depot cut them for me but it can also easily be done with a miter saw. This is what you should start with:

Arrange the 48" pieces and 21" pieces in a rectangular pattern, and screw them together at the joints. I chose to use two screws per joint. At this point it should look something like this:

At this point we lay the MDF on top, and cut it to fit, since it might not be the exact same size as your frame. Then, we mark the hole as mentioned above, 6 inches in diameter 9 inches down from the top of the board. I used a large drill bit to create a hole for me to stick the jig saw in, and then cut the hole with the jig saw. At this point we can see the board starting to come together.

So thats where I'm at as of this morning, and I'll update the post later in the day when the board is fully constructed.