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Plant Stands

White ceramic pots with black-stained oak stands

Plant Stands

Origins

It is always nice when you work on a piece that is going to be on display. I also like mixing materials into my projects, and these ceramic pots were just the ticket to go along with the espresso stained oak stands.

Details

The Design

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Plant Stands in Sketchup

This seems a bit silly looking back on it now, to have gone to this length in the design. But it was a great way to learn Sketchup, which has been super valuable in many projects.


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Mmmm... Taper

The Stands

The stands were cool to make, truly a 3d glue-up. A small taper on the legs gives it a nice look.

I used General Finishes stain and polyurethane for the finish. It is very nice stuff, very durable and looks good. Only problem I have with it is that it gives the workpiece a slightly plastic feel, and if you put too many coats, it can start to look a little like plastic. Which is fine if you want to make something shiny. Polyurethane does this because, well, it is plastic.

I’ve made three of these of varying sizes.


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Kiln Dried Pots

The Pots

After a couple weeks of letting the ceramic cure, I put nice white glaze on them. Then I fired up the kiln and baked the pots at around 700 degrees F for about 4 hours, and they came out nice.

Nah, not really. I bought them on Amazon for about $70 each. I would tell you the brand name, but they are not selling them anymore.

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Needing Vegetation

Assembled

It was important to get the width just right. You don’t want too large or small a gap between the pot and the stand. Too big and it will look silly, too small and well… good luck with that. Sometimes I am actually amazed that my measurements work out at all, but thankfully they did here.

All Done

Ta da! All dressed up with freshly potted plants and in their new home, though we do move them around around a bit.

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Complete with plants installed

Materials

This post is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by the author.