If you’ve been following my blog for more than a few weeks, you’ve probably heard me mention my precious fiddle leaf fig tree. Truth be told, it’s fake and I bought it from Homesense, ( insert rolling eyes ). Homesense is like Homegoods for all of my US readers.
Anyways, I was on a big hunt for a fiddle leaf fig. I couldn’t find anywhere on the entire island that carried real fig trees so I finally settled for this fake tree - 49.99. Hello!
I’m sure if I had of found a real fig tree, it would be dead by now so I do love my fake fig tree. I dust the leaves and kind of treat it better than most of my kids… JUST JOKES.
I had the tree sitting in a basket for a long time, but it always looked so weird having this thin little rooted tree in a big basket. So I researched pinterest for a box I could make it & nothing came up so I drew up the easiest plans ever so you and I can have our own plant box, for under 20 bucks!
Shopping & Cut List For DIY Plant Box
- 1 1x10x8
- 2 1x2x8
- Sunbleached Oak - Minwax Stain
- Dollar Throw Away Foam Brush
- Old T-shirt or Rag
- Varnish ( If wanting To protect the wood/stain)
- Nailgun - Click Here For Ours
- Sander ( Orbital )
So now that you’ve purchased your supplies here are the exact cuts we made for ours. You might ask why we didn’t make our box exactly a square, we were trying to make our little box fit snug with the base of the faux plant.
Cuts:
Front & Back Panel: 8 1/4 x 9″ high
Side Panels: 9 x 3/4″ x 9″ high
Bottom: 8 1/4″ x 8 1/4″
Front & Back Panel Trim: 9 H ” x 9 3/4″
Side Panels: 10″ Across x 9″ Up
X’s: 9 3/4″ Cut them on
Lets get started!
Here are you 5 cut pieces for the sides & bottom. Don’t mind our ugly nail gun, we use it every day and it’s getting bit old.
You want to start off by nailing all your pieces together. You are going to want a nail gun for this as it shoots extremely fast and makes it under a minute to assemble the box. Also, the holes from a nail gun are very small, so easily fillable.
Don’t worry about it being uneven and not perfect looking. Take your orbital sander and give it a good sand down before putting the Frame & X’s on.
Time to put your frame on. These were all cut on a 45 degree angle. We framed in all four sides.
16 pieces cut on 45 degree angles at 10″ Across x 9″ Tall. Quickly Nail all of these pieces on and now you have your box!
We only put X’s on the very front of our box as we ran out of 1×2’s and we wanted this box to be built completely out of scraps.
Glen has a super easy trick for beginners that he likes to use on small projects like this. He takes his L Level and draws a line on where the cut needs to be made, then he just adjusts his saw to that angle to make the cut. Super easy. No guessing or mistakes.
and you want to do the exact same thing for the last two cuts. It really is super easy and this way, you make less mistakes.
Now you want to fill the holes with wood filler. I like to use wood filler to match the stain I’m using. I let it dry for about 4-5 hours and then you want to give your box another good sand.
Once your box has filled holes and is sanded you can stain! I like to apply stain with a foam brush as the application goes on much more smoother. I let the stain sit on the piece for about 10 minutes and then wipe off.
You want to let the stain dry for a few hours and then apply your varnish. If you don’t care if the wood is protected you can skip this part and bring your new pretty plant box up!
and there you go! My super easy plant box. I plan to make a few more for some ferns on my front steps, so stay tuned for how that goes. Is anyone else into ferns right now? I’m dying to go hiking and dig two up! Call me weird or something
Enjoy your Wednesday friends!
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