DIwYatt: Modern Plant Stands

Melissa has been asking me for some plant stands for a while, but several weeks ago, she finally gave me some more direction and I decided to spend a Saturday working on these.

Then it took another month or so for us to get this up on the blog for you all, but this should be a pretty simple tutorial and a fun little project if you want to make your own! Melissa has already asked for a couple more, so I may need to follow my own instructions again, too.

I built these out of scraps, but all you would need is a pine 1″ x 2″ and a pine 1″ x 4″ which makes this a very cheap little build.

We are using these plastic white trash cans from Ikea but you can measure whatever pots you have. Melissa also has some of this style ceramic pots from Wal-Mart and they work too, although it’s not as snug of a fit. (They look even nicer than the plastic ones, though.)

For the legs, I used my tablesaw to rip the 1″ x 2″ down to two square pieces that were 3/4″ x 3/4″. If you don’t have a table saw, you could do this with a handsaw, just have patience. You could also do it without ripping the 1″ x 2″ down, the legs would just be a little chunkier.

Here is a diagram of how the cross pieces were assembled. First is to get your boards to the right length. I just measured the pots we had, and then got the length to match where the legs would hit the pot about halfway up.

You can make yours as tall as you’d like based on how heavy/top heavy your pots will be. Just keep in mind that these legs are sturdy but not heavy enough to keep a heavy ceramic planter from toppling over if you have it several feet off the ground and someone bumps into it.

The slot in the middle should be exactly half as deep as the board. When they are put together in the cross arrangement, the orange board and blue board should be smooth.

The pocket hole screws could be replaced with a second dowel. I used them to avoid having to clamp the legs to the cross piece while the glue dried. The dowels are glued into both the cross piece and the leg.

The dotted line in the diagram above represents the dowel inside of the blue and orange boards.

Believe it or not, the only difference between the two are the length of the legs. The taller one is 22″ and the shorter is 18″. The cross pieces are both 6″ from the top. Melissa says they look like one is wider, but it’s just an illusion.

To finish them, I gave them a very thorough sanding and then Melissa stained them with some walnut stain. They ended up matching the floor really well.

Also, please note that you’ll need to have a plant dish under any pot that has drainage holes on the bottom so that you don’t get any leaks onto your floor when you water. You can see the small white dish Melissa has under the bigger pot, above.

And if DIY isn’t your thing, Melissa found a few “ready to order” options with a similar look. Just click the image to shop.

She also has her eye on this huge ones. They’d be pretty cool outside, or next to a tall piece of furniture. And then an option with metal legs. Again, just click to check these out, too.