Patios and sundecks have become something of a new living area for many people in recent years. Patios and decks are great places to entertain, to enjoy family and friends and to just relax and unwind and enjoy the great outdoors.
The popularity of these new living quarters has spurred a whole new industry of out door furniture and accessories, including lounge chairs, formal dinning tables and chairs, stools, benches cooking and entertainment pieces, BBQs and so on. To help add to this growing trend, we decided to make our own Patio Plant Stand. It's easy to make (you can often make them with leftover lumber) they can be painted, stained or covered with material, what ever suits your needs.
For out plant stand we kept is very simple, it's basically a 24" high, by 24" long and 12" wide with one tier in the middle to help offset one of the plants and give the stand some "life". We started off by ...
.. by cutting all our pieces for assembly. All the legs were made with lumber store 2"x2" wood, and in our case we hand some 2"x3" and 2'x4" pieces, we simply cut them to length, then ripped them on the table saw to be square.
The parts list is simple - 2 - 2"x2"x24", 2 - 2"x2"x12", 2 - 2"x2"x15" (these will be the support posts for the top tier), we also need 2 - 1"x4"x24", 2 - 1"x4"x12" and 6 - 1"x4"x12" which will become the top of each tier.
After all the boards are cut to length and width, it's time to layout where the rabbets and dados need to be cut for the cross support pieces as shown in the video.
If you have a dado blade you could cut them out with this, or you could even cut these out on a bandsaw if you have that. I opted for what I know most people would have and that is a table saw, so all we needed to do was to make multiple cuts ... knock out the cut pieces with a hammer after they are cut, then clean them up with a chisel. They don't need to be perfect, after all this is supposed to be a "rough" piece, not like custom made living room piece of art furniture.
When the rabbets and dados are cut, next come assembly. I have made many of these in plant stands in the past and have used galvanized nails, outdoor screws and even galvanized air nails ... which I used for this build (I would recommend 16 gauge nails or larger for this type of build).
After putting the little stand together, it is up to you whether or not you want to stain it, paint it or leave it natural. This would also depend on the wood you selected and some woods that tend to rot quicker out doors would be better off being painted or stained, especially the bottoms of the legs to prevent water from wicking up into the wood.
All in all this is quick, easy little plant stand to make, and it looks great. It can be made in a variety of sizes and place a different points around your patio or deck ... or you could even use this indoors. Either way, it's fun, quick and easy to make and doesn't require a workshop full of tools to make these.
Copyright - Colin Knecht
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