Vintage Potting Bench – beforeIf any of you hang out with us over on Instagram then you’ve actually seen it when I was stalking an ugly shelf that lived in the shop! And you also saw my wheels turning, I even shared some behind the scenes building when we made this vintage potting bench… seriously guys, I over share on there, go follow along.
Vintage Potting Bench – DIY – Outdoor Extravaganza
Again with the nagging… if you follow us on IG
Those two before images – ugh! I have to show you the ugly first, right? 😉 Let’s get down to business, shall we?
Vintage Potting Bench – DIY
So let’s talk turkey… *spoiler alert The upper green cabinet needed to be modified. Keep in mind, Bud was totally thinking I had lost it… “let’s just take one side off and trim the shelves” – OKAY – looney-toon – his eyes were saying! “I can see how cute it will be in my mind’s eye – trust me”! And, this is how we made it happen…
- Measure your cabinet top – ours was 42″ wide.
- Measure your table, leg edge to leg edge, ours was 31″, I played around with having the top be wider than the bottom legs, but that looked odd. We needed to “shrink” the upper cabinet by 11″.
- Decided now if you want to modify your vintage cabine – well actually decide before you take it off of the wall! This green cabinet lived in the shop and was here when we bought the house – and was already modified in a past life. I mean it was ahhhhhbused! It was so rough, so for me the decision was very easy – MODIFY! Gently as possible take one side off of your cabinet – we caused some extra damage doing this – but I patched the pieces that came off with wood glue and brad nails. YAY!
- Measure and cut your cabinet to it’s new determined width; we started at the top and followed the marked cut-line up the back all the way to the bottom – then we moved to the center shelves and cut them off – following the cut-lines. The tool for this is the oscillating saw – mind blow how well this little piece of kit works!
Image source
*full disclosure… this isn’t the one we used the one we used is old as the hills and not as pretty! 🙂
Now it’s time to reassemble… we used wood glue and brad nails to put the side back on (the inner shelves were nailed from the back too so they stayed straight). We decided to not screw the top cabinet to the table – this piece can be used as a temporary potting bench. I had wanted to paint it white at first, but the green really grew on me and I decided that I can always paint it later if I’d like! Once it was all back together we moved it to the porch – gave it a good deep clean and that’s when the fun started – styling!
Vintage Potting Bench – Reporting for porch duty
I added some vintage yard sticks to the front of the shelves – I love how that looks!
Pretty lavender – I’m obsessed! So much so I want to plant full fields of it… don’t tell Bud!
A couple of vintage hooks – yes please! I love how my lady looks out over the property, she makes me smile!
A busy planting day – we filled the copper ash bucket below the potting bench with soil – so handy! Here you can peek a couple of projects I have yet to share. 🙂 Hope you’ll stick around to see those too.
This little table isn’t perfect… at some point in it’s life someone made a makeshift drawer front, still cute with the original glass knobs.
So what do you think, am I cray? haha don’t answer that rhetorical question. 😉 I’ve thoroughly enjoyed participating in this year’s Outdoor Extravaganza I sure hope you’ve enjoyed it too?! As I promised above, there is so much more inspiration from the OE gang – enjoy!
Thank you so much for stopping in! xo
Satori Design for Living | Vinyet Etc. | The Happy Housie | The DIY Mommy
PMQ for Two | Clean and Scentsible | Finding Silver Pennies | Casa Watkins Living | So Much Better with Age
Zevy Joy | Shades of Blue Interiors | Amber Tysl | Craftberry Bush | A Pretty Life
For your pinning pleasure
