A few months ago a good friend of mine who shares my interest in DIY gave me a hand to finish off some decking down by the Sleepout. He has been doing a few odd jobs like that for various people I know and recently he came to me with an idea: How about we turn some of that left over timber from these jobs that’s just lying around people’s houses into something useful.
He suggested building some planter boxes. I immediately agreed, as I have built a few of my own in the past and have always found them handy to have. Because he’s a poor struggling pioneer with very little space at his place I agreed to using a handy space I had at my place. His aim was to turn this old waste into some cash.
So after determining the best style and construction to use based on the materials we had, he immediately set to work cutting all the pieces. He used 40mm decking for the legs and top frame, and shadow clad plywood for the sides and base. In some cases he used a bit of rough sawn fencing timber for the legs instead which produced a lighter result. My drop-saw came in handy for getting the 45° mitre joins on the tops just right. He ripped down some of the decking into smaller battens and used them as rails on which to sit the bases.
Before long they started taking shape and he had the first one finished. We decided to make sure the lines in the shadow clad board went horizontal instead of vertical as we agreed it looked better. Once he got a few to that stage it was time to get a few choice snaps ready for selling them on TradeMe (that’s the NZ version of Ebay). Apparently planter boxes like this are selling in outdoor Garden Centres for around $150 each. If he can sell a few he’ll be able to pay a few of his bills.
So using the sleepout as a backdrop I shot a few pictures of them. All the bare timber colours of the sleepout and decking tied in nicely showing them at their best. I put a couple of pot plants in them to show how they might look.
I really like them. They’re almost like a piece of outdoor furniture – very nice.
Great work. May they sell abundantly
ReplyDeleteThanks Tony, This whole exercise has turned out to be a lesson in why you should do a bit of research first.
ReplyDeleteI noticed when I went to post them for sale that there are a number of people doing the same thing. Some are posted for sale at half the retail price mentioned in my post and there was nobody bidding on them at all. Perhaps there's not such great demand for them.