Wooden planter boxes

Side project!

Because we don't already have enough to do working on the ceiling at the cottage, I decided that I need  to build some wooden plant boxes to go down on the dock.

First, I hopped on to Google Sketch up to fiddle with my design. I had trolled the internets looking for something I liked, but couldn't come up with a quick, stupidly simple box design.

Here's what I came up with after about an hour of fiddling and reacquainting myself with how Google Sketchup works:

 It's made entirely out of 1x3 lumber (roughly $1.70 per 8' length) - inexpensive furring strips - with no fancy cuts or angles.

I figured I'd need 8 boards to build a box, and I plan to build two. It works out to around $15 per planter, once you factor in screws or nails.

The "leg" boards are each 21" long and the side boards are 18". The horizontal boards were measured and cut to size. Inside the box (immediately behind the bottom horizontal board) is a matching horizontal board, upon which the 5 bottom boards will rest.

Here's my workstation; aka: the deck. Clean up is a snap; I just have to sweep the sawdust into the spaces between the deck boards. The captain jokes that we're going to end up filling up the space under the deck with sawdust.

And here's my helper. This was supposed to be a project that the two of us would work on together, but he quickly tired of the "work" part of it, and buggered off to scheme about his go kart. Slacker.

This is where I left things at the end of the day on Sunday. Everything for one planter is cut. I just need to put it all together and paint it. As soon as I get back to the cottage. Which should be in about three weeks. *sob*