File Cabinet Planters

When I first saw a file cabinet planter on Pinterest I knew I had to make one! {or 4...} I love the modern look of square planters, like ones you can find at CB2, so when I saw there was a DIY version, I was all over that! My sister Jesi found my first file cabinet. A 2 drawer dented thing that was sitting on her street for FREE! Score! My 2nd one I found was a 4 drawer cabinet at a garage sale on my street for $3! My 3rd was another 2 drawer cabinet Adam and I found at another garage sale for $0.25!! seriously! My 4th was a small desktop single drawer I found at Goodwill for $3.99 {come on Goodwill, the smallest one I found was the most expensive!}
I LOVE yellow so I decided to go bold, just like the one I saw on Pinterest.

The bottoms of all the cabinets are hollow! The post on Pinterest did not explain this! I wasn't sure what to do with the gaping hole until I saw some extra corrugated metal sheets in our garage that were left over from our headboard project, from 2 years ago! Perfect!! I measured the space, marked the metal with a sharpie, and used tin snips to cut. It was a little bit of a struggle to get the sheet in - but once it was in I immediately loved it! {I think I must like yellow and tin!}

I then filled the cabinet with plastic recyclables I had been saving like yogurt containers, milk jugs, coffee creamer containers, pop bottles... to fill the bottom about 1/3 so I didn't have to use so much dirt to fill it. Once that was done and in place where I wanted it I started filling with dirt. It actually took A LOT!

I planted peas in the back and petunias in front. My hope is the petunias will crawl down the front; hasn't happened yet. But I still love how it looks!

For the small "desktop" file drawer I didn't have to worry about a hollow bottom so I just painted. Watson thought I needed his help.

{before}

{after}

I love how they turned out! & the pop of color!

Confession time: by now you all should know I love spray paint. I use it on everything! When it came time to paint my file cabinets I went to Home Depot for paint. I was thinking I would need at least 5 cans of paint to cover all the cabinets. That was going to be about $16. Instead of just getting that, I decided that the $10 quart of yellow Rustolium paint would be fine since all the edges are flat and I could just roll the paint on. Ok, fine. Saved the $6 and bought the can of paint. I painted the large cabinet, got it in place, planted... a week later paint was peeling and bubbling all over! SO Frustrating! The only thing I can think was that I didn't wait enough time during dry times..? I don't know, but I have never had anything happen like that with spray paint. So I scrapped off the paint, cleaned off the cabinet, dug out my 6 petunia plants and 8 pea starts. Scooped out buckets of dirt... Then spray painted. Refilled with dirt, replanted,... a month later no bubbling, no peeling, it's perfect. Thankfully I hadn't done all my planters yet, so the other 3 got spray paint from the beginning and I've had no issue with them!

**Tips:

-Use Spray Paint!!!

-Fill with dirt. Water your dirt. Add more dirt before you plant. Since the cabinets inside have a lot of nooks and crannies for the drawers to roll the dirt really settles and I found that I needed to add more dirt than I did the first time around {good thing I guess I had to re-do the large cabinet}

-Don't buy your cabinets from Goodwill! :)

Spray Painting Planters

I don't know what I would do without spray paint! I use it on pretty much everything. Last spring a good friend handed down to me some planters that she didn't want anymore with a topiary already planted in them. These planters were originally from Restoration Hardware and are amazing! Something I would always want, but never buy for myself. These planters were defiantly weathered, but still amazing. This spring I decided that they needed a face lift. I was at first leaning towards painting them white, but then thought of how dirty they would always look so I decided on just refreshing the current look. I choose a Rustoleum textured slate color from Home Depot.

{before}

{After :: I also planted some petunias and alyssum}

All the rust is covered and the weathered spots are all gone! They look almost as good as new!

This is what they look like today! The flowers have gone crazy!

 I LOVE these planters, they are definitely the focal point of the patio.

Raised Flower Bed

Hello long lost bloggers.. It's been a while.. I've been busy, to say the least. Working 2 jobs, living with my college student husband (who just graduated June 14 - woohoo!!) current change of jobs, raising our 4 fur-babies, and blogging wedding on my work blog, MonogramWedding & of course the usual house projects and upkeep. Holy Moly! Things seem to be calming down a little bit and I can finally breath and get some sleep, and now catch up on some blogging!

If anyone knows me, you might know that I am a little impatient. When I want something done, I want it done, now! Which could be why in the heart of "spring showers" I was creating a raised flower bed along our back fence and traipsing through our swamp of a yard with buckets of sand and dirt (because it was too wet to use a wheel barrow) and hauling by hand arm fulls of slate for the retaining wall. Looking back, I probably could have waited a month, or 2, but I got it done and absolutely LOVE it! I can't believe we had NOTHING along our back fence before. {I completed this project in April}

{our yard is clay, so until it stops raining for about a month, our entire backyard is a swamp! Thank goodness for rainboots!}

Our street flooded back in January, it was the craziest weirdest thing. Our whole street was like a river. We literally had neighbors boating by.. the water got as high as our front yard so we went out and got free sand bags, just in case. Thankfully the water never got to the house, but it was scary! I used the sand bags from that to build up my base for my raised bed. I left the sand in the bags and lined the fence. Then I went to a sand bag drop zone and got more loose sand to put on top, then added dirt. I got my plants from Leon Nursery in Sherwood. They had a Groupon for $19 for $40 worth of plants. I had $10 in Groupon bucks so I got the deal for $9! I ended up spending $57, but since I had the Groupon, it was really only $26 total! What a deal for my pretty new plants! The slate retaining wall was made from free slate we got last spring from a good friend {remember this post?} The rock path in front was created last weekend by my mom when we did a major yard makeover! {more on what we did coming soon!}

My mom also planted some Clematis which hopefully will grow up the fence! I LOVE how the whole thing turned out and enjoy looking out our kitchen window and seeing some color!