The Making of a Garden Dresser

One of the challenges of downsizing is deciding what to do with the extra furniture.  In our old house I had this wicker storage dresser in the kitchen, but there was no room for it in the new house.  

And it was starting to look pretty shabby so I decided to give it a makeover after seeing a picture like this one on Pinterest. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/112097478203711086/ 

I think this was one of my first makeover’s, and I used paint that I had leftover from my kitchen.  I also had a bird stencil I thought I would play with.  Not my finest work… but it was a good start.  

I still didn’t have a spot in my new house, so I got thinking it would fit well in the new garden behind the house, especially since I have an ‘garden bed’ right beside it (that is for another day!).  I wasn’t too worried that the paint was chippy and wearing… it is going in the garden!

Once we had it in place, my trusty handyman Tim swooped in with a level…yes, a level!!!  He was gonna set this dresser straight!  Haha… get it… set it straight???

uggg…sorry, that was lame!  Anyway, lets move on to the steps I took to create the garden dresser.

1. We got the dresser secured in the garden, and fully leveled.  And my handyman thought it might be front heavy and begin to tip. I won’t make fun of him this time… he had a good point I hadn’t thought of!  To prevent this tipping he staked it into the ground in the back
2. The next step was to figure out how far the drawers should come out… some people don’t use all the drawers, but I wanted to fill it up, so I will use them all!  I also choose to go symmetrically, but you could easily stagger it some of the drawers.
3. I didn’t want to fill the entire drawer with soil for two reasons; it would be really heavy, and I didn’t want to waste the potting soil.  So I cut some pressboard to be a divider in the drawers.  They are mostly just wedged in, but again, my handyman came to the rescue and cut a few pieces of 2×4 to put behind the pressboard to prevent the dividers from moving… they aren’t in this picture but you can see why he thought they may slide out of place.
4. I also lined the drawers with plastic bags… I am not certain yet if this was a good idea or a bad one.  I am worried about the drawers rotting from the moisture, but the flip side of the coin is I want to make sure the plants don’t get water logged.  I’ll let you know how this works out!
5. I love playing in the dirt, so this step is one of my favourites… get out the shovel and fill it up with some nice potting soil!
6. Woo Hoo… it’s time to plant the flowers!  I was looking for flowers that were not going to grow too tall but be dramatic. I love verbena, so that was a good choice for the bottom.  And I thought I might try celosia for the middle drawer… again for drama purposes.   And for the top two end drawers I wanted the Lobelia to cascade down the sides.  I’ll be honest, I only chose the coleus for the top middle drawer because I had it in the yard!

There you have it… a garden dresser!

I am anxious to see how this little sweety will look in a month or so… and I will post some updates as the summer progresses!

Linked up here:

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http://chiconashoestringdecorating.blogspot.ca/

http://www.frenchcountrycottage.net/2016/05/feathered-nest-friday_19.html#more

http://www.craftsalamode.com/2016/05/what-to-do-weekends-174.html

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