Make a planter - Save the People

Alrighty. I talked in this post about how the deck project started with the intent to build a planter on the side.

Well, we did that too.

The two main purposes of the planter: keep the chairs from sliding off the edge (happened twice with people sitting in them, thankfully no serious injuries); and add a little somethin'-somethin' to an otherwise utilitarian space.

Sorry, this isn't going to be a how-to post. It was a Mateo project and I was elsewhere for the duration. I can tell you that it's built right into the side of the deck, the planter portion has drainage holes in the bottom, and it was built as a basic planter box on legs and then faced with the boards.

We let the kids pick the flowers. (Next year I may pick some trailing things, but it's nice to give the kids a say.) At first I was going to just jumble them together, which is my normal method of planing. But then I thought, why not jump on the ombre bandwagon? The stuff they picked would work. So we planted dark to light.

And, no chairs have fallen off the deck since the addition of the planter.

 Score! 

Up Top

We wanted to add a planter to the deck, and we knew there were a few loose boards, so step one was to repair that. Except when we really inspected the deck, it was clear that more boards really needed to come off...

...like ALL of them. sigh.

Our foolish little selves said, "well, it's still an afternoon's project. Use the power drill to unscrew the screws, pull off the boards, slap down the new ones and screw it in. What could be easier?" Heh, heh, heh.

Turns out whoever put the deck in didn't use the right kind of screws. They were so rusted the threads were gone so no amount of unscrewing was going to budge them.

Break out the crow bar, hammer, and Mateo muscle power. Poor guy had to pry and rip off each board through brute strength.

Uh, to say he wasn't happy would be an understatement.

It took him one afternoon and one morning to pry off all the boards.

It really did only take a few hours to put the new boards on.

For water runoff, you need space between the boards. Mateo just used large nails to maintain the spacing. Tapped them into the joists, screwed the new board in, pushed up against the nails, popped the nails out and repeated.

Sorry not the best pic, but can you see the nails between the boards?

We are going to stain and seal, but I read somewhere that pressure treated wood needs some time before you seal it. I really don't know for sure, but it is drier now which seems like a good thing. I think we will stain it at the end of the summer.