Sturdy Light String Planters

You guys! If you follow me on Facebook, I gave you a little sneak peak of a project that Chris and I have been working on! These Sturdy Light String Planters are what we needed for our deck and I'm in love!

I often see projects on my reels and I get sucked in. There's so many projects out there for light string planters, however, I knew ours needed to be sturdy, withstand wind and me not freaking out if they were going to get knocked down or not! So here's what I came up with:

• Planters (we got these at Lowe's for under $30 a piece!)
• Concrete - we ended up using 4 80 pound bags
• 3 4x4 Plates - again we got these at Lowe's in the wood section
• String Lights
• Potting Soil
• Flowers

These were so freaking easy to put together! The hardest part of the entire project was me impatiently waiting for the concrete to dry so that I could start planting the flowers!

Want to know how we did it? Here's a step by step tutorial with pictures so that you can complete this project at home! Please be sure to share your final results with me on social media! I'd love to see what you came up with!

Chris already had the 4x4 posts, so I simply stained them! He had attached hooks for the lights to hang as he previously had them in a 5 gal bucket with rocks...I wasn't about to let that happen folks! I like nice shit and to ball on a budget!

First, we drilled out the water holes on the bottom of the planter so that water can drain after a heavy rain.

Next, we drilled in the 4x4 plates for the 4x4 to attach to. You will need an assistant during this process to hold the 4x4 in place, while someone else drills holes to attach the post to the plate.

Once that was done, I made a little concoction of aluminum foil pieces and some packaging tape. We did this on the deck and didn't want to have to move them after the concrete was poured. This prevented the concrete from coming through the water holes and worked pretty well. 

After the concrete had dried, we flipped them over and removed the tape and aluminum foil.

The next step was mixing the concrete. We did it a few ways, but found that it was simply easier to pour the concrete in and mix it with water. Be sure you are scraping the bottom to ensure all the concrete is mixed properly.

Once the concrete dried, Chris drilled a hole on the backside of the planter right above the concrete just to have an additional drain hole for water to get out. We did a few tests of pouring water and wasn't happy with how water was sitting on top of the concrete.

Chris and Bryson hung the lights and I got to planting flowers!

Overall, this was a pretty freaking easy project that Chris and I worked on together. It took about 4 hours in total with staining, mixing the concrete, hanging the lights and planting the flowers! It's totally worth it and these string light planters will be around for years to come!