We Built a Fancy Planter

My husband built me a fancy plant stand today (ok, maybe it took him 3 weekends to do it, but who is counting?).

I saw this plant stand a few weeks ago at the City Farmers Nursery.  I could tell that this plant stand was made from fence wood, because we'd been using fence wood on all my square foot planter boxes and I recognized the wood color and the notches at the top of the wood.

The planter box I liked and wanted to make

So we set about building it.  We bought the wood from Home Depot.  We bought 8 boards that were 7.5" wide, and another 8 that were 5.5" wide (all matching fence redwood).  That amount of wood makes two plant stands.

The boards at Home Depot

Prices of the boards

The boards were $4.27/ea for the wide boards and $2.35/ea for the smaller boards.  And we were able to fit all the boards inside my Camry!

16 boards fit in the Camry!

Starting to cut the small boards down

Each stand has two 7.5" wide boards, for the sides, with no cuts (original lengths).  Then each stand has four short 7.5" boards acting as the base of each planter box.  To make those, we just cut the wide boards short, removing the notches at the top.  Then there are 8 planter box side boards, which are the 5.5" boards, cut to length.  Then the feet to brace it and keep it upright (it's really tall).  We just used scrap wood for the feet.

Here is the final product!  I've put it in front of a window on the back of my house to give us something decorative to look out at.  I've already filled it up with soil, and planted lettuce in it.  This side of the house gets direct sun, and faces south.  So I'm hoping it will get a lot of sun and grow nice lettuce.

The final product!

Hubs put some REALLY big feet on the stand -- you know, California earthquakes and all...