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01/16/2022

What: Mak­ing a wood­en ele­vat­ed planter

When: April 2021

Sup­plies: Wood (lots of it), router, sander, wood screws, rub­ber feet (option­al), wood stain, wood seal­er, wood filler, drill, dri­ver, shop vac­u­um, clamps, cir­cu­lar saw, ruler/square, pen­cil, rub­ber mal­let, wood glue, weed bar­ri­er cloth

Time: a few days’ worth of time for me

The Plan­ning: I spent a LONG time research­ing and plan­ning for this project. It was very excit­ing for some­one who had nev­er done any­thing deal­ing with wood­work before aside from ran­dom­ly putting two pieces of wood togeth­er into a makeshift stool. Hours of image and prod­uct search­ing along with videos. Here are few of the images I found online that I ulti­mate­ly decid­ed on using as ref­er­ence:

The Process (in pic­tures!)

Get­ting Start­ed:

^This was the gath­er­ing and deci­sion stage where I had to decide how I want­ed to ori­ent the wood, made a few test cuts, mea­sured out some things, fig­ured out rough­ly the size I was going for and if it was rea­son­able giv­en the mate­r­i­al. Wood qual­i­ty and that kind of thing are new to me, so I was­n’t sure what to buy, and then just went for it. Ver­ti­cal or hor­i­zon­tal planks? In the end I went for hor­i­zon­tal for less wood cut­ting and less screws required. My sis­ter has a pre-made planter she bought with ver­ti­cal planks, and it was­n’t secured, so some­how squir­rels dug into them and knocked them all out. Not hap­pen­ing with this planter.

Router Work:

^Very fun to use a router and it was very first time, to boot! I found out that router bits are very sharp, that rout­ing makes a MASSIVE mess and should be done out­side, if pos­si­ble (still find­ing saw­dust in every sin­gle nook and cran­ny of the base­ment), and there’s a rea­son why router tables are a thing. I would def­i­nite­ly use a rout­ing table the next time if I could.

Frame Assem­bly:

^As you can see, I don’t have a very large base­ment at all. Nei­ther do I have sawhors­es. I did­n’t even have enough clamps and had to impro­vise a lot of what I was doing. This was prob­a­bly the most frus­trat­ing part of the project, try­ing to weed through all of the wood for straight wood, doing all of the math and mea­sure­ments, only to require revi­sion half-way through, then hav­ing the frame con­tin­u­ous­ly fall apart from lack of appro­pri­ate equip­ment, and deal­ing with the lit­tle imper­fec­tions here and there. It kind of looks like a bed frame, does­n’t it, though? I was so proud when I achieved the last pic­ture in this set.

The Slats

^Dry lay­ing of the wood and then using spare pieces of wood as spac­ers. Turns out that it was­n’t per­fect­ly even, but that’s okay, because who would notice? The spac­ing is for air­flow for the plants and water drainage. I debat­ed whether or not to place cor­ner slats, being afraid that water would just sit with­out being able to be drained, but went for it any­ways, con­sid­er­ing it would be sealed with the rest of the planter. I guess if I want­ed to get fan­cy, I could have grad­ed the wood a bit away from the cor­ners.

Remain­ing Assem­bly

^Lit­tle things like try­ing to fig­ure out how many and where to place screws with­out them over­lap­ping or break­ing the wood. Not too many, but not too few. Where would it be best of lift the hefty thing espe­cial­ly when it’s full of wet soil? It was very dif­fi­cult and painstak­ing to cut the top trim and secure the 4 cor­ners. Then rout­ing those to a smooth edge and sand­ing it all down to smooth­ness but also to rid of the pen­cil marks. My lack of prop­er clamps came back to haunt me with the top trim. Then wood filler to fill in the holes and more sand­ing. This part took a huge chunk of the time and made a mas­sive mess. But it’s most­ly done! And it looks good!

Stain and Seal

^ Yay! Then I decid­ed to put feet on it because I did­n’t want the wood to just sit on the ground soak­ing up water. That’s where one of the leg pieces that was full of knots con­tin­ued to be the bane of the project. Also, I used the wrong screws. Make sure you’re using wood screws. It’s not shown, but I caulked around the rub­ber feet and the wood.

Fin­ished Prod­uct

^ Not shown in pic­tures, but you can see the weed bar­ri­er I line it all with so that the soil won’t fall through the bot­tom of the planter. Grand­moth­er = Very Hap­py. Me = Proud.

In Con­clu­sion: This entire project took me about 3 week­ends to do and hon­est­ly, by the end of it, I just want­ed to be done (espe­cial­ly because I end­ed up crush­ing my foot some­thing awful with some of the equip­ment ear­ly on). It cost me around $300 — 400 in equip­ment and sup­plies (most­ly because wood prices in 2021 were sky high) which puts me over the amount to just sim­ply buy one pre-made. On top of it, the sheer weight of pure wood is sub­stan­tial and some­thing I did­n’t real­ly con­sid­er when plan­ning the project. Nor was I plan­ning on so much left­over wood. One of the biggest prob­lems I ran into with it all was the qual­i­ty of the wood. SO MANY of them were too bowed or warped to work with and now they’re just sit­ting there being a fire haz­ard in my base­ment because it cost me so much mon­ey to begin with. How­ev­er, the process, the plan­ning, the doing, and then the recep­tion by my grand­ma, grand­pa, and oth­er rel­a­tives made it all worth it for me. I was and con­tin­ue to be proud of what I did despite the mis­takes and imper­fec­tions. The best part about it all is that I know that if I ever want­ed to attempt it or some­thing sim­i­lar in the future, then it will take much less time sim­ply because I know more about what I’m doing (and also because I the right tools now). I have oth­er ideas in mind (like a top for the planter and an out­side squir­rel-proof toma­to plant cab­i­net) that hope­ful­ly I can bring to fruition one day.