Saturday, March 27, 2010

Flower box

Jeremy's mom is off in Southeast Asia for a 70th birthday present trip. We didn't help pay for the trip or anything, but we went down to KC to hang out with her partner (who can't skip dialysis to go gallivanting around the world unfortunately) and to build his mom a planter box.

Of course, any project must begin with a sketch (and a trip to the store).



We lugged down the table saw, mitre saw, and other tools so Jeremy could do this project.









It's official - we need some of these for our house too!

The box is all cedar with heavy duty locking wheels so it can be moved about easily. We can't wait to see what is planted in it!

4 comments:

carolynagain said...

That's one classy planter. How long did it take? I was going to buy planters to use at our rental, but this is prettier than anything you find at Lowe's, and I love the plastic-less-ness of it.

carolynagain said...

OK, that was weird. Let me try to comment one more time.

Lovely flower box! How long did it take you make it? Is this something a person with zero experience might attempt, with some hope of similar results?

Aimee said...

It took Jeremy about a day - he estimates about 5 hours. Whether or not you could do it - I guess that depends on how comfortable you are with power tools!

He used 2x4s and 1x4s. He built a frame on the bottom (mitred corners and all) and then cut all the 1x4s to the same length to fit in the groove. He used a table saw to trim a couple pieces down thinner so everything fit tight.

He cut the mitred pieces for the top next. (This gets complicated to explain!) He held the short side pieces up and screwed them into the 1x4s; then he attached the long side pieces into the short side pieces. Then the top pieces were screwed in. Then there were some interior pieces that got screwed in.
And he screwed in 2x4s in the bottom.

Jeremy did mitred corners, but if you aren't comfortable with that you could probably get away without that.

Now, we bought cedar so we wouldn't have to use plastic - but in the end he ended up using some anyway. This is because cedar is water-resistant not water-proof. There is thin plastic sheeting just on the interior walls of the planter, not the floor of course. So hopefully this makes it last much longer.

The original plan was to use the salvaged wood from his mom's deck that was being replaced - but the deck wasn't deconstructed yet. And, it's treated lumber. So there was an argument for using plastic to keep the treated stuff from leeching in!

If you can use salvaged/reclaimed wood this will be much cheaper. We bought 10 1x4s and 7 2x4s. There were a couple leftover - but it was expensive!

If you're still interested and my description makes no sense, let me know and we can send a clearer copy of the plans Jeremy drew up.

carolynagain said...

Thanks Aimee! I'm going to ask my husband to look at this with me. He has woodworking experience--I see now that I couldn't do this without some guidance. (At least I do know *what* a mitered corner is...but my knowledge ends there.) I'll let you know if a clearer look at the plans would help.

Thanks!