Hello fellow DIY lovers. If you’ve been pinning ideas for gardening, painting, sewing, or building projects, this is the perfect time to stop collecting inspiration and start doing. For this seasonal DIY challenge we chose window boxes—a simple way to add dimension and soft greenery to a long, boxy ranch-style house. These additions are decorative rather than essential for resale, but they make a big visual difference and were high on our to-do list.
We considered both buying ready-made window boxes and building our own. In the end we found planters at Home Depot that matched the mid-century, clean-lined look of our ranch and were close in cost to a DIY build. We bought the window boxes, plastic liners, and mounting brackets—then set about installing them on our brick facade.
The planter style was perfect for our house: understated and in scale with the facade so the flowers can be the focal point. Here’s how we installed them on brick and a few practical tips we learned along the way.
Step One: Mark the placement first. Hold each window box up to its window and mark the bracket locations so the box will be centered. Use a hammer drill to create pilot holes for masonry anchors in the brick—this makes fastening the brackets much easier and more secure.
Step Two: Attach the brackets. Follow the package instructions but use better hardware and the right tools:
- Use proper masonry screws or tapcon anchors rather than the short, low-quality screws that sometimes come in kits. We used 2″ masonry tapcon screws for a secure hold.
- Drive the screws with a hammer drill rather than a standard cordless drill to ensure the anchors seat tightly in the masonry. The ones we tightened with a regular drill were loose and had to be redone with a hammer drill.
Step Three: Once the brackets were firmly mounted, place the window box onto the bracket and fold the small metal tab over the box lip to lock it in place. The tab is intentionally bendable so you can secure the box by hand, but it helps to press it firmly for a snug fit.
Step Four: Insert the plastic liner. Pop out the pre-marked drainage holes in the liner (we used a house key to punch through the thin perforation). The liner’s drainage holes align with the planter’s pre-drilled drain outlets, which keeps excess water from pooling and makes the boxes plant-friendly.
While I worked on the boxes, the rest of the family helped around the yard—spreading mulch and tidying up the beds—so it turned into a quick team project (and a bonus: we ended up with plenty of mulch and a few unexpected inchworms to greet us).
To quickly fill the boxes with plants that already have a trailing habit, we used hanging baskets purchased from a local nursery. Hanging baskets are ideal because the plants are already grown to spill over the edge, giving immediate results without waiting for growth to happen. We gently divided the baskets and arranged portions into each window box for instant, full-looking planters.
The result is three modest, well-proportioned window boxes that complement the brick rather than compete with it. Their neutral planter color allows the blooms to take center stage. As the plants continue to fill in and trail, the window boxes will gain more of that lush, overflowing look.
Quick summary and installation tips:
- Measure and mark carefully for centered placement.
- Use a hammer drill and proper masonry anchors for brick installations.
- Avoid the small screws that often come in kits—choose sturdy masonry screws instead.
- Use pre-grown hanging baskets to get an instant spill-over effect in each box.
We’re thrilled with how these simple window planters transformed the front of our house—clean, approachable, and full of color. If you try this project, we’d love to hear what you did and any tips you discovered along the way.
