Cedar Planters
Updated: May 8, 2021
My daughter was wanting to build a small planter for the front of our house. She is only 8, but she already loves decorating. I'm sure her future husband will be bored to tears waiting on her to finish perusing the aisles at Hobby Lobby. So I began looking in the 731 Woodworks Facebook group for inspiration. After scrolling for a while I came across a posting by Chad Porterhouse that used 3 fence pickets. I showed it to my wife and daughter and they both gave it a thumbs up.
For a while now I had been wanting to learn how to use Fusion 360 to plan my projects out beforehand. Since this project is pretty simple in design I decided it was the perfect project to sketch out in Fusion 360. After several YouTube tutorials and way more time than I would like to admit I finally had the 3D model of my project made up.
After I had my plans and my cut list I could finally get to work. My daughter decided she wanted 2 planters, so that meant twice as much work, but I was up to the task. After a quick trip to the lumber yard, it was time to get to work.
Following the cut list that I had made (see link down below for the full plans). I used my miter saw and table saw to get everything cut to the right size.
Once everything was cut to length it was time for assembly. For this whole project, I am using Titebond 3 and brad nails. The brad nails don't really hold the project together. All they really do is hold things together until the glue dries. First I assembled each of the 4 sides. Two of the sides had the legs attached flush to the edge of the sides and the other two had the legs overhanging the edge by 1" (twice the thickness of my cedar pickets).
After attaching the legs to the sides, it was then time to connect all 4 of the sides together to form the box. I then added the trim to the top to help make this planter look a bit better. If you want to take this to the next level you could add mitered corners to the top as well. However, since I am just working with cedar fence pickets I opted to keep it simple.
Next, I cut two 11" pieces of cedar from the scrap pieces I had leftover. These 2 pieces were to support the bottom slats. After attaching these supports flush with the bottom of the planter, the bottom supports were nailed into place.
This was a great quick project that can be done on a budget. I am going to take pictures of these and post them on Facebook Marketplace to try to get some orders for these planters. With the lower price of materials, this is the type of project that I think will do better right now as we are facing these unprecedented lumber prices.
Watch me build it here:
Tools and Supplies Used:
6' Cedar Pickets (3)
Brad Nail variety pack 18 gauge https://amzn.to/3obiuyt
Titebond 3 https://amzn.to/2RFXinJ
Ryobi Brad Nailer https://amzn.to/3o1hBIk
Ryobi Table Saw https://amzn.to/3vLogZY
Zero Clearance Tape https://amzn.to/33pkklF
Go here to get the FREE plans.