These days in the Do-It-Yourself age, you can create something out of pretty much anything you find on the street. Gardeners have been creating unique pieces for their gardens for years. We are going to take a look at how to build your very own planter out of a used filing cabinet.
Here is a good starting point for you to begin this build, where to look for your filing cabinet and even some modifications after the built to suit your needs.
1. Search Craigslist free section for old file cabinets, before you go pick them up, ask them if the cabinet has a hollow bottom or a solid bottom.
Most newer cabinets don’t have a bottom at all! (to save metal maybe) but this is not good for planter boxes. The perfect file cabinet is usually pretty old and has a perfect smooth bottom. There are other file cabinets that have a bottom but its a little raised from the bottom.
In that case, you might have to cut a piece of wood and fit it in if you want it to have a perfectly smooth surface.
2. Putting wheels on the bottom: For planters on a balcony or any other location that it will need to be moved will need this additions. This gives you the option of moving them around from time to time.
It's also a way to raise it up from the floor so the planters have proper drainage (and does not rot your balcony from collected water).
Four metal wheels can be purchased from Home Depot (3.99 each) and a pack of nuts and screws. Drill holes to align the metal wheels and bolt the wheels in from the inside.
3. Proper drainage: Drill 10-20 holes in the bottom of the cabinet to provide proper drainage for the plants.
4. Painting the cabinet: Since the planter will be outdoors, its important to paint the cabinet with rust proof paint.
First, sand off any rust from the cabinet, clean the cabinet, prime the cabinet with Rustoleum primer for metal. In using one bottle of primer, which did not cover the whole cabinet in white but in just wanting to give it a light priming job.
Two bottles of Rustoleum for metal spray paint to finish off the job. NOTE ABOUT RUSTOLEUM SPRAY PAINT: read the directions fully! it says that you can pain the 2nd coat on within 1 hr OR 48 hrs of 1st coat!
Do not paint a second coat on between that time or the paint will bubble and peel off (as I found out the hard way!). I have had my plants for a few months now, the paint looks great. We’ll see how it hold up through the rainy season!
5. Filling the file cabinet: If you have a four or five drawer cabinet, that’s a lot of dirt you have to buy or obtain for your planter. One way to get around that is you can put large rocks at the bottom to take up some volume. (but it makes the planter pretty heavy).
Another idea is you can put styrofoam packing peanuts at the bottom. They provide drainage and are safe to use at the bottom of planters. HOWEVER, if you are going the packing peanut route, make sure you fill the planter at least half way up with peanuts.
Once you put the dirt on top of the peanuts, the peanuts will be crushed by the weight of the dirt and only provide you with maybe 1/5 of the volume you originally filled it with.
6. If you don’t want to fill the whole cabinet up with dirt, you can also put some buckets (for height) in the cabinet and simply place some potted plants in the cabinet. You might want to make a “cover veil” for the top and put some nice white rocks or sand so it doesn’t look like you just have pots inside the cabinet.