DIY Raised Planter Box with Hidden Drainage _ How to Build

What's up guys ?

I'm Brad Rodriguez from Fix this build that .

And today , I'm gonna show you how to make a Planner box with a cool hidden drainage feature .

And I'm also gonna show you how to remove dents from wood with a clothes iron , stay tuned and I'll show you just how I did it .

The planner box is made entirely from cedar one by fours and I love the look of cedar for outdoor projects , but it has a lot of color variation .

So before you start cutting , it's a good idea to lay out the pieces and think about how to use the dark and lighter boards .

I started off by making the leg assemblies .

Each leg is made from 21 by fours joined at a right angle .

I cut all eight leg parts to the same length , but since I'm using a butt joint to join the legs together , one side of the leg assembly would be three quarters of an inch wider than the other without any modification .

So I cut three quarters of an inch off the width of four of the leg parts .

And now each side of the assembled leg will be 3.5 inches wide .

Other than the color variation , another problem with cedar is , it tends to have a lot of knots and some of my boards had loose knots which would fall out later .

So I mixed up some five men and epoxy and applied it liberally to any loose knots to hold them in place .

I'll be joining the legs together with a combination of pocket hole joinery and glue on an unpainted piece .

I always hide the pocket hole joints .

So I only made holes where they would be covered by the legs or the lower shelf to assemble .

I put glue on the edge of the narrow piece and clamped it to the full size leg part and secured it with exterior pocket screws to get a good bond in the large gap between pocket screws .

I used a small f clamp to clamp the parts together while the glue dried .

I repeated this process for all four legs and set them aside to dry .

Then I moved on to cutting the front back and sideboards and here's where the color planning really comes into play .

I laid out my cuts .

So I would get two fronts and four sides from the same 12 ft board .

So the color would wrap consistently around the box .

I cut the long boards first from each 12 footer .

Then I moved my stop block in and cut the shorter sideboards .

I think keeping track of the cuts .

And the board layout here really makes a difference in the final product to add a little detail to the planner box .

I put a small chamber on the edge of each of the boards that make up the box .

And since I'm not gluing the boards together into a panel , this will also help hide any gaps between the boards as they expand and contract with humidity .

Before heading back inside for assembly , I sanded everything to 150 grid so it'll be ready for finish after it's assembled back inside .

I laid out the boards for each panel .

You can see here the design I went for alternating between dark and light boards for a racing stripe look .

I laid two of the leg assemblies out and used side pieces at the top and bottom as spacers to make sure everything was parallel .

Then I put down a nice beat of glue where the boards would go and attach the side panels one by one with exterior screws .

I repeated this process on the other side and I had my two side panels done to join the sides together .

I clamped down a scrap of plywood to my bench as a straight edge for reference .

And I butted the sides up against it and laid down some glue and put the top and bottom boards in place .

It was a bit tricky here to keep everything aligned .

So I used a long clamp on the top and the bottom of the panel to position them in place .

Then I attached them with one and a quarter inch exterior screws like this side to finish off the other side .

I flipped the assembly over and repeated the process , making sure my boards were laid out with the right color combination .

Ok .

I went back to the miter saw and I cut boards the size for the lower stretchers and for the front and back batons and each of these pieces is going to be 1.5 inches wide .

So I cut them the size on the table .

I laid out the position for the lower shelf stretchers and glued and screwed them to the legs on each side .

And while the planter box was still on its side , I attached the front and back batons , I centered each baton then secured it to the top and bottom boards with screws .

Then I put a screw in each of the other boards to hold them all flush in the same plane next up .

I cut all the parts for the lower shelf .

The shelf needs eight slats all the same size along the bottom to keep the slat edges from chipping and to add a little bit more detail .

I put a small champ for on the top edges of each board and when routing all the edges of a board , do the ingrain first and then the long sides .

Now the ends are more prone to tear out and a second pass on the sides will help clean up any tear out that does happen .

I'll be screwing down the slats to the stretchers .

So I pre drilled holes on the ends of each board to get consistent spacing and a nice clean look which you guys know that I love .

I used a little plastic cabinet , hardware mounting jig and drilled an extra hole in it .

It worked great and it gave me exactly repeatable holes .

Ya O CD .

I want to thank Rigid for sponsoring today's video and for being a longtime sponsor of my channel , you'll see me using a variety of their tools in this video and all my videos and they've really done a great job of extending their 18 volt cordless lineup with tools like the cordless router and the cordless sander you've seen here .

I'll have a link down below in the description where you can see all the latest promotions that rigid has going on and check out their full lineup .

Next up .

I cut the parts for the top frame .

It's a simple minored frame from full size one by four .

I started by cutting one of the shorter parts of the size cutting minor on each end .

And I use that part to mark the cut for the second short piece to get it to the same length for the long frame parts .

I got a little smarter and I made a 45 cut on the end of two boards , then I stacked them together and cut the other ends .

At the same time , this made getting them the same length a lot easier to give the minor joints a little reinforcement .

I drilled pocket holes on the underside of each end of the short pieces for assembly .

I laid out the parts upside down on my bench and applied a liberal amount of glue to the short boards .

I used the band clamp to pull everything together and referenced each of the corners with a machine of square before screwing them together with pocket screws .

OK .

Be honest , who realized that the planner in the thumbnail had a four board front panel versus the five board panel you see here .

Well , this was the exact moment that I decided the look of the planner was off .

The fifth board made it look way too chunky and the drainage system that I was gonna use .

I didn't need the extra space for it anymore .

So I swallow my pride and I took a lesson in failure and setbacks .

And luckily , I'd not glued the pieces together as a panel .

So I was able to use a flush cut saw and remove that bottom board pretty quickly .

Unfortunately , the ends were still glued and it took quite a bit of time and persuasion to remove those little bits with a chisel .

But I'm glad I did this in the end because it looks a lot cleaner .

In my opinion , after all the struggle , the assembly and the disassembly , some of the parts had a few bumps and bruises on the planner .

And whether you hit your board with a screwdriver , a drill or a hammer , you can likely remove those dents and marks .

All you need is a damp towel or rag and a close iron lay the wet rag right over the dents and put the hot iron on top of it .

And the steam penetrates the wood and expands the crushed wood fibers .

If the fibers have been severed , it won't work as well .

But you can see here after sanding , it really turns out nice and you can't even see some of these dents .

The last piece of the planter box was the bottom in the hidden drainage system .

The bottom is split into two sides and I cut four cleats to hold the bottom slats .

I laid out marks for the cleats so that they had a half inch slope from the outside to the middle of the planter box .

Then I pre drilled each cleat and secured them to the sides with screws for the bottom .

I used the worst of the boards that I picked up from the lumber yard .

I cut them all to size , pre drilled a hole in each of them and then laid them into the planner on top of the cleats .

Now , the heart of the drainage system is this two by three inch section of PV C downspout .

I positioned the inner board so that the down spout just fit between them .

Then I just evenly spaced out the rest of the boards and secured them to the cleats as well to keep the bottom shelf clean and dry .

The spout will extend out of the back of the planner and drain the water safely away from the shelf .

I marked off some lines on the PV C that would let the spout stick out past the planner .

Then I just cut that section out using some tin snips .

Now , jigsaw or Bana or dribble tool would also do this easily with a notch cut out .

I could mark the top of the pipe for a sloped cut to allow the water to run off .

I cut it at an angle and I had the base of my drainage ready .

But before I attached it in place , I wanted to apply my finish and attach the top frame .

I forgot to cut pocket holes in the top of the panels earlier .

So I had to use my job max right angle attachment to get the job done .

It worked .

But doing it beforehand would have been a lot easier for the finish on the planner .

I brushed on two heavy coats of spa , Urethane .

I really love how the spa brings out the warm tones of cedar and it protects really well outdoors when the finish was dry .

I went back and installed the hidden drainage .

I just pre drilled some holes in the down spout and attached it to the sides of the bottom boards .

And I'll show you how this works after I install the liners .

Before putting in the liners .

Though I installed the top with pocket screws in those holes that I just drilled earlier .

And the last part of the drainage system is a combination of the landscape fabric and some plastic sheeting .

I started by covering the bottom with a layer of landscape fabric stapling it in place .

And I made a little trough right above the downs spout .

The fabric is just to keep the soil from getting out and into the drain and clogging it up .

But the main part of the planner liner is this black plastic sheeting .

The plastic liner will keep the moisture off of the cedar and it's gonna let your planner last for a long time .

It'll also collect and direct all the extra water down to the middle of the planner where it can go into the downs spout to let the water escape .

I poked four large holes in the plastic right above the down spout using a dow that has sharpened on a sander .

You can poke holes with anything you just need to give the water somewhere to escape .

So , of course , I had to test out my contraption to see if it really worked .

So I poured some water into the planner and it drained right out the back just like I'd planned this worked out really cool and it's a great option to keep that bottom shelf dry and clean .

We took the planner out to the yard to get some good pictures of it .

My boys helped me fill it up with soil and plants and this could be a great father's day project to do with your kids and use the planter box to garden with your family .

We plan on growing some herbs and veggies , letting the kids care for them and learn about gardening and growing your own food .

It's gonna be a fun little activity to do together as a family .

If you want to build your own planner box , check the description below .

They'll have all the details there .

If you're not subscribed to the channel already , I'd love to have you as part of the team .

And until next time guys get out there and build something awesome .