First, a note to readers who sent in helpful suggestions to get WordPress working again, or telling me to buck up and learn how to do it right. Thank you.

Personally, I think WP felt bad and decided to do better, since it once again is sort of working fine for new posts, but the few posts done on the weekend I’ve had to scrap, they are permanently … confused.

So, from the church of the reincarnated deadwood and recycling, I’m back, and here’s a recycling post:

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I live in an old house. Renovation projects result in left-over wood, some of which is old. Very old. These are some boards that used to make up the garage door (c1929) which had a second life (1990-2007) as a bike shed. I hate to throw out “heritage” stuff.

And they don’t make boards like these anymore. Several of my planks were almost 12″ wide (the biggest inside the house was about 20″ wide).  So, I decided to recycle my old boards by making a planter project.

I cut an old piece of 2×6 PT pine (c1990 bike shed) into a square base for the planter, so the old wood boards won’t soak up moisture from the patio. Behind the base, are two little risers made of old trellis and arbour posts, these will go inside the planter to hold up the planting pot.

Above: three sides of the planter box are in place, using PT screws and adhesive. If you squint closely, some sides are entirely made up of just two boards. Next, I put on the fourth side.

The planter is almost finished. Some bits of scrap board make up the collar at the top. Then, as shown below, I put inside the risers I previously made…

Then I put in a large plastic pot, filled with a mixture of peat moss, vermiculite, and perlite. Alarmingly, I heard on the CBC that vermiculite is form of asbestos … Then I stuck in two cedars I got a Loblaws for $20.

if you look closely at the bottom left corner of each, you can see the original 1929 hinges are still on the wood. They don’t function, I just left the rusted bits there to scream out “heritage hardware”. Lastly, I made a picture frame style top for the planter, to finish the raw vertical edges. These boards came from the aforementioned bike shed, which had a kids tree house on top (lacking a big enough tree…). At one creative point we had painted tree trunk and leaves on the shed so it looked (if you were 6 years old) more like a tree house. Bits of these leaves cling on …

My out-of-pocket cost for these two planters were the box of PT screws, a tube of construction adhesive, and the two cedars themselves. The wood, hardware, trim, base, risers, and pots were all recycled from stuff around this old house.