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! :)