Easy Project - Antique chair planter

The fact that the second "Easy Project" I'm posting is a planter, as was the first one, is purely coincidental.

I swear, I don't have a compulsion to transform everything around me into a planter.

On a recent trip to Bonham, the Mrs and I found several diamonds in the rough. One of those, was an old School Desk Chair that was in really rough shape. I took a picture of it when we got home, but I had a dumb-ass moment and deleted the picture before I had a chance to upload it. It looked just as bad as the old phone ringer box that I worked on in the first Easy Project.

Trust me, it looked like a turd.

I stripped her down with some Formby's Refinisher and a Scotch Brite pad. Took less than 30 minutes to do the entire chair. I gave it a quick wipe down with Watco Danish Oil, and then let it sit overnight to dry. The next day, I took a plastic flower pot and set it on the seat upside down. I traced one pencil line lightly around the rim, then removed the pot and eyeballed another line about 3/8" inside the first circle.

I cut out the inner circle with a jigsaw, making a round hole in the seat of the chair just the right size for the pot to sit in while supported by its rim. I took the pot out and gave the chair 5 coats of Minwax Spar Urethane. Why 5 coats? Because that's how many coats I could get out of the can. After a year of exposure, I will probably have to recoat, but that can easily be done in the spring before I put fresh plants in the pot.

Here she is:



My chair planter will be on the deck in shade for part of the day, so I picked shade tolerant plants. The coleus will grow taller at the back, while the Torenia (summer wave blue) will trail nicely down from the seat with tubular blue flowers all summer. It should look really good when it fills in and the plants take off.



You can use round pots, like I did, or you can use square "storage bin" type containers. I've seen lots of old chairs at flea markets that are missing the seat entirely, so you can do this type of project even if you don't have a jigsaw to cut out a hole. Chairs can be stained, like mine, or painted.