A old stepladder earns its keep as a great multilevel plant stand.
A three-tiered plant stand can add visual interest to a sunny corner of the kitchen or a corner of the patio. In the spirit of all things green and growing, make a simple and attractive stand that's completely recycled from an old stepladder, some scrap lumber, leftover paint and a faux-aging glaze. The stepladder provides enough shelf space for a vertical flower garden or an herb patch for the cook. If the look works and you have an old wooden ladder around, make a companion plant stand for even more height variety. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
1. Wire-brush or wipe down an old stepladder and check it for stability. If it is wobbly, brace the sides with the ladder fully open by screwing a 1-¼-inch by 4-inch or a similar-size piece of lumber to each side at the midpoint of the fully open ladder. Use scrap lumber if you have it, in the spirit of an entirely recycled piece.
2. Screw or bolt a 2-inch by 4-inch brace across the fly (the nonstep side) of the ladder at the height of the second step. Use a carpenter's level to be sure that a board placed across this brace and the second step will be level. If the horizontal brace near the bottom of the fly is level with the bottom step, you can use that to support a shelf without adding another brace.
3. Screw plywood "shelves" over the braces, step to fly brace, at the bottom step and second step level. The top step of the ladder is its own shelf.
4. Antique the ladder by painting it all over with a vivid or dark base color. Once the base coat has dried, slick crackle glaze over much of the ladder in every place where the paint might have worn from use or weather damage over time. Apply the top coat of paint, a contrasting or lighter color, as the glaze begins to get tacky. You might use barn red as the base coat and a chalky turquoise as the top coat, or slate gray as the base and lima bean green as the top coat --- whatever will give an attractive contrast when the paint cracks and the base color shows through.
5. After the top coat and glaze are finished reacting and the ladder is dry, sand the edges lightly with fine-grade sandpaper to simulate more wear. The base color will show through the sanded areas and the craze where the paint cracked from the crackle glaze. You can leave your new plant shelf as-is or protect it with a clear coat of lacquer if you don't want natural weathering to further age it.
6. Set plants on the shelves, using the real steps and the new shelves inside the pyramid of the open ladder.
Tags: base color, plant stand, second step, base coat, bottom step
