DIY Planters - Large Cedar Planters for Cheap!

Howdy and welcome back! After finishing the courtyard makeover, we took a little family vacation to Denver. I had planned on writing some tutorials on all the DIYs I did in the courtyard, but the stomach bug hit and we spent most of our time in Denver inside the Residence Inn playing board games and watching horrible TV. But, now we are back and all better and getting ready to start the biggest project yet – the kitchen! As I prep mentally and psychically for that I wanted to share with you how I made those large DIY planters out in the courtyard. I started looking around at planters for this space, and…are you kidding me with the cost?? $200 + and I didn’t even care for those that much! So I just made my own. Take that expensive planters!

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So, you may remember a while back when I shared my favorite modern courtyard ideas from across the internet and included the beautiful tapered cedar planters from Jen Woodhouse. I knew the second I saw them I loved them. Now, when my friend Adam…aka Lazy Guy DIY…designed my outdoor table for me and introduced me to cedar fence planks…well, it was destiny. I had some leftover planks, I went and bought a few more and then got to building.

I did mine similar to Jen’s, but changed a few things. Get her original plans HERE. I’ve talked before about how I love squares, and for this space I knew a square version would work better than the tapered. I’m still thinking of doing a couple of tapered ones for outside the entryway, but for this space I wanted square. I also wanted to raise the bottom up a bit so I wouldn’t have to put so much dirt in.

Materials

Scrap Plywood

Scrap Outdoor Treated Wood

Cedar Fence Pickets

Pocket Hole Screws

Wood Glue

Rust-oeleum LeakSeal

Minwax Polyshades in chosen colors

Recommended Tools

Miter Saw or Hand Saw

Nail Gun

Kreg PocketHole Jig

Drill

Tutorial

First I grabbed some scraps and got started. I cut an outdoor, treated 2×6 down to 4 pieces. Then I drilled pocket holes in the bottom. These will hold the bottom of the planter.

Next, I put together the pieces, added the cedar planks with wood glue my nail gun until I got a nice square box. For the larger planters, I put three cedar planks, and for the smaller one I put two.

Then, I cut a scrap piece of plywood down to be just a tiny bit smaller than the square.

I used pocket hole screws to then attach the cube to the piece of scrap plywood.

Then I added the bottom pieces with the nail gun. This makes the taller ones 4 planks tall and the shorter one 3 planks tall. Easy peasy!

I taped the edges off and then used Rustoeleum LeakSeal to fill the cracks around the top and some waterproof silicon to fill the lower cracks. I used the Rustoeleum because it is like paint but it seals the holes so you don’t get water leaking out.

Then I drilled a hole in the bottom for drainage.

I stained the planters to match the table and used Minwax Polyshades in oak and classic black.

Then I added topsoil and planted the hollies! I also added these floating house numbers to the front one, because we desperately needed markers somewhere on the house.

That’s about it for my diy planters? Have any questions? Sound off below!

April