Turning Dog Bowl Stand Into Flower Stand

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Step 1:

Our dog has died. When he was young, he killed one cat and used to hide under my desk when it was thunder outside, or when parents were arguing.

Step 2:

My mom asked me to turn the bowl stand, my dad made for him long ago into flower planter... thing.

Step 3:

I sketched a design right onto the thing. Since the initial item was far from being perfect it makes no sense to be precise, and simply eyeballing is the way to go here.

Step 4:

After that I took the thing apart. At this point it became pretty obvious that 14 years of standing outside was... was bad for the wood. Pieces were crumbling and falling apart. I decided to make do my best with what I have anyway and proceeded.

Step 5:

With a jigsaw I've cut the details according to my markings.

My jigsaw has this issue: when the material is too thick the blade tends to tilt (bend). In this particular case it was rather beneficial.

Step 6:

With a router I've rounded the edges on all details (I used larger radius for thicker wood).

Step 7:

To refresh the top layer of the wood I used scrub plane. I've deliberately left surface rough after planing since it complemented the stile and plane smooth surface would look rather out of place on mostly irregular freehand cut pieces

Step 8:

In the design I tended to use most of original structure without adding much new. But for this piece I had to use newer material. This is a "bridge" detail, that connects the legs together and, also, as I designed it, is suppose to support the bowl from underneath.

Step 9:

Here I'm putting the thing together to define hight, and mark the place where the bridge connects to the legs.

Step 10:

One of the leg pieces had a substential crack in it, and at this point it complettelly fell appart, so I had to glue it back to life.

Step 11:

To straighten the whole structure I decided to add these two planks of newer wood to the constructure.

In order to do so I've cut a recess in the inner sides of the legs, Then the planks were fitted into the cut and glued and screwed to legs.

Step 12:

Two legs were then glued and screwed to the bridge. Don't forget to predrill.

Step 13:

I putted the pieces of the top together and marked the holes for the screws. after that they were screwed to the planks on the legs.

In this project had to choose what type of screws to use. Since regular screws with funnel shaped heads can easily split decrepid wood, I used them only on stronger pieces; othevice I used mushroom shaped screws that introduce flat surface of the head to the surface of the wood.

Step 14:

Those two holes on the back of the stand were used to hold a couple of wooden spoons. Now, to justify their existance I decided to use them for installing this trellis ladder. I made it from different scrap wood pieces.

Step 15:

At this point the structure is done.

To stain the wood I used the liquid that is basically a waste from derusting iron with acids (citric acid in this case). I'm going to cover this in a bit more detail in different instructable, so stay tooned. Othervice, you can use steel wool and white vinegar recipe (which is basically the same thing).

Right after applying the liquid, the wood looks just plain wet, but the effect shows itself after some time and after few hours you'll get more evident result (you can see the difference on the photo). Aftr time the colour will become even darker, so don't be too anctious to apply more layers

Step 16:

After the stain has dryed I applyed a couple of layers of boiled sunflower oil (we have a lot of sunflowers in my country so it's cheep, but linseed oil is of more superior qualitie). Notice, that at this point the wood becomes even darker to look.

For the first coat I'm thinning the oil with solvent rather generously becouse I want it to soak the wood really deep (I could use some wood protective solution, but I wasnt sure how it'll work with the stain). For the second coat I used much thicker consistancy.

Step 17:

To be honest, the whole thing looks a bit strange, if you don't know its origin. My mom haven't planted anything in it yet, but when she wil, I'll add photos. I think it'll look much better with flowers in it.

But, this is it for now, thanks for your attention and cuddle your dog if you have one.

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