Hang Window Boxes, step by step

Word up my fellow Pinterest playas. Hope you got down with some baking, crafting, painting, organizing, sewing, building, or knitting lively because it is time to share this season’s (fully unofficial) Pinterest Challenge (not sponsored by Pinterest or anyone else, simply dreamed up by Katie to make us stop pinning and start doing). The only rule is to pin something you’ve hoped to get done (big or small) and do it. You know, instead of sitting on your duff pinning other things… which I will admit happens a whole lot in my world.

Our mission this season? Window boxes! I in fact pinned two window-box related pics, this picture simply for the eye candy of it (at $90+ bucks per box they are purely for inspiration) and this walkthrough for making them (which we planned to do if we could not find ready-made ones in our price range). We thought they’d add some pleasant dimension and soft greenery to our long boxy ranch, and they’d been on our list for a while. They are certainly not necessary for resale or anything, but we simply could not part with this house without seeing how cute they’d look. How’s that for being a weirdo? Anyway, here are the three windows that we thought could use some quaint greenery…

And here are the materials (the window boxes, liners and brackets) that we grabbed last week at Home Depot (we priced out building vs. buying and realized it was fairly close).

We enjoyed that the planters were clean-lined and mid-century-ish (it was like they were made for a ranch). As for how to hang them, here is what worked for our brick facade:

Step Numero Uno: Use a hammer drill to drill pilot holes for the screws for each bracket (after carefully marking where you want them to go by holding up the window box to make sure it is centered).

Step Dos: Hang the brackets according to the package instructions (you are essentially simply drilling them into the pilot holes you make while adding that weird little metal thing up top (we will get into what that is used for in a second). Oh but we made two mistakes for you, so now that we know what not to do, we hoped to spread the word:

1. Do not use the low-cost/short/non-masonry screws that come with the kit! We had 2″ masonry tapcon screws that we had leftover from our fireplace project that worked truly well.
2. Do not use a regular drill to get the screws in, be sure to use a hammer drill! It truly got them in tighter and the ones we screwed with the regular drill were lose and needed to be redone.

Step Tres: Once we got our method down, it was straightforward to get them in pleasant and tightly. And then the weird metal thing on the top of the bracket could be bent over the window box once it was placed onto the bracket, thereby locking it into place. The metal thing was so soft you could simply bend it with your hand. Although I should have told you folks that it was crazy hard and the only reason I could do it with my bare hand is because The Hulk is my second cousin.

Step Four: Drop the plastic liner into the planter box while making a weird face (check). Oh and be sure to pop out the two drainage holes in the plastic liner beforehand (I used a house key to smash them out since they were slightly perforated but I could not get them with my finger). The cool thing about the drainage holes in the plastic liner is that they line up with the pre-drilled drainage holes in the planter box, so that was pleasant planning on Home Depot’s part.

You might wonder what John and Clara were doing while I was on window box duty…

Yup, they were spreading mulch. And it was adorable. And we all had about 100 inch worms on us by the time we were done outside.

But back to the window boxes. I used an old “cheaper and already grown in” trick, which is to buy two hanging baskets from a local nursery (Strong Big Greenhouse, here in Richmond, where I in fact had a store credit so they did not cost me anything). The reason hanging baskets are so smart for window boxes is because they already spill down and appear to “drip” instead of the typical pots and flats that they sell for gardening. Hello, instant gratification!

I simply dumped them out and quite quite carefully divided them as gently as I could…

… and bam: I had a few spilling-over flowers for each window box, without having to play the waiting game while they grew over the edge.

Are not they cute? I have no idea what kind of flowers these are. I think the white and pink ones are petunias though. Perhaps these purple folks are some other blend of mini ones?

I think the window boxes are sweet little additions. Not giant and commanding, simply casual and plain. I in fact enjoy that they are the color of the brick so the flowers are the star and they do not look too busy. And as they continue to fill in and spill out more I think they’ll look even better.

So there you go, three window boxes, some pointers for what not to do while hanging them, and one way to find already-droopy flowers to fill them.

And simply look at that fresh come-hither mulch. Me-ow.

Do not forget to check in on Katie, Emily, and Renee to see what excellent projects they’ve whipped up (they’ll all be sharing theirs sometime today as well)!

 

And we’d enjoy to hear what you folks did for this season’s challenge. If you’ve already blogged about it, simply:

1. click on the blue “Add Your Link” button with the odd cartoon head at the bottom of this post (you might have to do some scrolling, depending how many projects are brought in)
2. add a link to your specific journal post about your project in the url field (not your home page)
3. where it says “name” write a descriptive name for your project (ex: “Homemade Leaf Wreath”) as opposed to your actual name
4. we’d also enjoy if you could swiftly link back over to our project posts within your own (here is Katie’s, Emily’s and Renee’s) – it is also pleasant to link to your inspiration project on Pinterest as well as to directly link to the original project/site, simply so they get some enjoy too.

And if you’d rather simply link over to your project in the comment section, feel free to do that – or even add a link to a free photo sharing site like Flickr with your pics if you do not have a journal (remember to set the gallery to public so we can all see it). I am borderline too excited to see what you folks have been up to…