Spring has arrived, and it is time to celebrate by hitting the garden center! These DIY re-purposed window flower boxes are a super cute way to shnaz up your outdoor space and are easy to make.
I’ve had these old wooden windows bouncing around with us for several years. They have served many decorative purposes, but I am the most excited about their current use. I had two awkwardly blank walls on my shed that I knew I wanted to hang these guys on. At the last minute, I decided to add the flower box feature and I’m so glad I did.
The supplies you will need for this DIY are : 1×6 lumber, stain/paint, screws, and a salvaged window or two. I was lucky enough to score both of these windows for free, one from a friend and the other from a project we did at our old home. There are many other places to find these antiques, and I would suggest hitting up a local salvage yard, window or glass repair shop, or Craigslist.
To prep the windows, all I did was give them a matching coat of paint to my shed trim. Then you will need to measure the width of your windows. My windows were both roughly 28 inches wide. So I cut three pieces of 1×6 at 28 inches long. These pieces are the back, front and bottom of my window boxes.
The side pieces are a little tricky. I wanted my window boxes to slant outward and be wider at the top than bottom. To achieve this look, you will need to cut the bottom of the piece narrower than the top. To do this, I cut my piece to 6 inches. Then I measured and made a mark on the bottom of the piece at 4 inches. Next I drew a line from my top right corner down to my 4 inch mark and used this line as a guide to trim off a triangular piece from each end board.
Once I had all of my pieces cut, I assembled my window box. I didn’t do any fancy jigging here, just pre-drilled holes and screwed the boards together. After the box was all put together, I gave it a good sanding and a coat of stain. I also drilled a few holes in the bottom of the box for drainage.
After the stain dried, I screwed the flat side of the box into my window frame.
After I attached my boxes to my window, I hung the window onto my shed wall using wire. I simply screwed two screws to the back of the window frame at each top corner to loop the wire around.
Planting The Window Boxes
Now its time for the fun part! I put a layer of dirt into my boxes. Then I arranged my plants how I wanted them and filled in the box. I chose to plant a filler (wave petunias) and a spiller (verigated vinca) in my boxes. Each plant was only a couple dollars at my local garden center.
Be sure to break apart the bottom of the root ball when you pull your flowers out of their containers. This will help them re-establish in the new container. Since there was dirt involved in this project, my littles especially enjoyed helping.
After I watered my freshly planted flowers, I was all set to kick back and fix myself up a cold brew coffee.
