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More scrap wood planters

Posted by on Monday 4 April 2011 in growing, making, wood stuff | 6 comments

These are WIPs rather than finished articles but I wanted to mention them anyway because it’s pretty much all I achieved over the weekend – I had a nice quiet weekend, just not as productive as normal.

On Friday afternoon, I had that “I must make!!” craving so I went to hunt around in the (supposedly for burning) wood store for scraps to planters – I found 30 plank offcuts, roughly the same length (about 25cm/10ins) and width (13cm/5ins) and 12 batten offcuts, about 15mmx30mm. I’d intended to make another long trough but I realised those pieces would make three 25cm/10inch-cubed planters without having to saw anything at all – win!

(I don’t mind sawing now that we have a decent saw that treats everything like butter – but I like to avoid it whenever I can because I’m lazy and always end up with wonky cuts :) )

As with the other planters I’ve made, these aren’t exactly working examples of right angles or beautiful to look at but they’ll do. They’re finished in terms of building but the planks were all untreated and while I’ll line the inside anyway, I think I’m going to have to treat or paint the outside to make them more weather resistant. As we’re painting the bathroom soon, we should have some paint leftover from that which I can use.

The other planter I started yesterday afternoon before I had to rush off to a not-great dress rehearsal. I went down to the bottom of the garden to look for pallets (to make a vertical planter like the one Emma suggested) but the only ones down there are too big/heavy – but I did find some old, weathered fence boards/paling, which John’s dad had salvaged & brought over at some point, so I decided to make another long trough planter from them. I’ve made up the long sides – using a salvaged/scrap 2by4 cut into quarters for the corner supports/feet – but haven’t attached the short sides or base yet. It’s going to be 120cm/4ft by 60cm/2ft when it’s finished so I might end up removing the feet and resting the base on the floor so it doesn’t have to be strong enough to support all that weight. I’m going to enlist John’s help with fixing on the sides – I’m hoping that two of us working together can actually get the angles square for a change!

While I was doing that yesterday, John was at his mum and dad’s house for lunch and his dad excitedly told him about his latest find for us — apparently the sawmill/joinery place he gets a lot of offcuts from had some 5m (16ft) lengths of decking going begging this week – salvaged from a replacement job or something. According to John, his dad now has a crazy idea for us to make some 5m long planters – that might be a little nuts! Perhaps I should work on my sawing skills after all…

6 Comments

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  1. Steel

    They’re fantastic! I have a huge pile of wood in the middle of my garden which I’d love to use for projects like that, but we have our fostered hedgehogs sleeping and nesting under there so pilfering from the pile is off-limits for a while.

  2. Rachel

    I’m amazed you have time for anything like this at the moment, what with rehearsals and all. I think these are beautiful, even if you don’t ;-)

  3. sara

    They are lovely..hubby made me some out of scrap wood to put my strawberries in..lasted far longer than the bought ones..
    take care
    sara

  4. Jono / Real Men Sow

    These look great!

    Given me the kick up the backside I need – I was going to try and make something like this over the winter. Time to get a move on!

  5. Linda

    Not sawing is not lazy it’s ‘efficient’ !!!

  6. louisa

    Hi guys, thanks for all the kind words!

    Steel: aww, sleeping hedgehogs. When do they wake up?

    Rachel: to be honest, I’m not sure either! Will be glad when this week is over!

    sara: I’m hoping that’ll happen with these too – would like to keep expanding my supplies year on year for a few years before they start to deteriorate.

    Jono: get to it that man!

    Linda: haha yes, I was just being very efficient ;)

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