Friday 27 April 2012

Guest post

Today I'm guest posting for Kaysi over at 'Keeping it simple'.

I love creating items for the home and garden using scrap or recycled materials. If I see something I like at the garden centres or online then I find a way to make something similar with as little cost as possible - preferably no cost at all.
My guest post for Kaysi today is all about  showing you exactly how I created this lovely bench planter from scrap wood, in just a couple of days and making it up as I went along,



This planter with built in seat was amazingly simple to build and can easily be completed over a weekend.
With just a few adjustments you can adapt it to be able to use whatever scrap wood you have laying about or can scrounge. As it happened for me my husband saved a load of lengths of 5"x2" from a wood workshop he demolished. I'd been wondering what I could make with the wood and that's when I happened upon this idea, plus I still have enough lengths left to build a picnic table for the garden and maybe even an Adirondack chair as well (tutorial on my blog soon).

To start with you need to collect all your tools and materials. I tend not to do this and always regret it later on when I'm hunting around looking for what I need and usually find I don't have it.
You'll need:
  • Wood. I didn't calculate what I needed and never work from plans but it's obviously going to be more convenient to measure beforehand. You'll need wood for the main construction and the seat, battens for a base ledge, slats to create the base and wood to make the top rim.
  • Screws/nails.
  • Tape measure & pencil
  • Hand saw or Cross cutter (electric all the way for me).
  • Dewalt drill or similar.
  • Plastic if you want to line the planter.
  • Fence paint or exterior varnish. 
Next head on over to 'keeping it simple' and check out the full tutorial.
Please say Hi to Kaysi and hopefully enjoy the tutorial enough to maybe have a go at something similar yourself!

Enjoy!


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1 comment:

Crafts a la Mode said...

Nice tutorial. I went to Kaysi's blog and read the whole thing. I want to see how to make the Adirondack chair so i am following you on linky. Thanks, Linda

hey, we're namesakes.