DIY Wooden Plant House Shelves

It’s probably easy to see that I’m a little obsessed with plants when looking at photos and videos of our home. I hardly ever consider a room “complete” until it’s filled with potted or hanging plants. Even teeny tiny plants generally find a special spot in the vignettes I style, and I thought it might be kind of cool to figure out a way to make small potted greenery more of a focal point by building individual DIY plant house shelves for them.

I teamed up with my dad on this project since I needed his engineer brain to come up with a workable design for my dreams of angled “plant houses,” and today I’m sharing all of the details in case you want to make some for yourself. Oh, and you can watch the houses come together in video format over on my Instagram feed in partnership with Hunker right here! Let’s get to those DIY details, shall we?

Here’s What You’ll Need:

1. Wood project boards, dimensions will vary based on your preferred house size

2. Compound miter saw or manual saw and mitre box

3. Pencil

4. Combination square tool

5. Tape measure

6. Hammer and nails

7. Wood glue

8. Drill and drill bits

9. Nail set

10. Sawtooth picture hanger

Now, I’ll admit right off the bat that measuring and math aren’t part of my list of strong suits. I didn’t seem to have inherited that from my dad, but, luckily, he’s willing to fill in the gaps for me. He took some time coming up with design plans for my plant houses, and I really didn’t have much part in it other than to dictate the general size I wanted and the type of roofline I was hoping for.

You can see the design he came up with pictured above. The drawing shows the dimensions of the wood pieces I cut using my compound miter saw, as well as the placement of the pre-drilled holes I added for the finishing nails. For example, according to the drawing, you can see that the hole I pre-drilled for the vertical nails connecting each side of the roof to the side panels was started one inch from the edge of the roof piece. You’ll also see notated that we decided on 45-degree angled cuts for the roof pieces to give the finished shelf that tell-tale house-y look. Anyway, if you want to know exactly how we measured, cut, and assembled these houses, that drawing above is your best reference!

To make the pieces of our plant houses, we carefully measured and marked up the project board, and then used my compound miter saw to cut things to size. Dad’s combination square tool helped keep the measurements and cuts super exact. Since you’re working with angles, it’s important to measure as accurately as possible to ensure a nice even finish at your assembled joints. We also used the square tool to measure and mark with a pencil where, exactly, I needed to pre-drill my holes later on for nails.

Now for assembly. The next day, I grabbed my drill and drill bits and set up shop on the floor of my studio. Since we had measured and marked the exact locations for the nails the day before, I was able to pre-drill the holes in the wood pretty quickly. Make sure you use a drill bit that’s a little smaller than the thickness of your nails, though, so that the nails go in tight. After that, I squeezed a line of wood glue along the two meeting edges, lined them up, and used a hammer and nail set to sink my nails deep into place for a strong bond. The last step, after letting the assembled and glued houses dry completely, was to install sawtooth picture hangers on the backs so that I could hang them up on the wall.

I left the houses unpainted because I like being able to see the wood grain, but I may end up painting them for fun to add a pop of solid color. What do you think? Leave them raw wood (and clean off the pencil marks, of course), or paint them? I also love that you can use these houses up on the wall, as you see pictured a few photos up, or as little shelf accents, like I demonstrated just above. I might actually even prefer the houses sitting on a shelf! Which way is your favorite? Let me know in the comments.

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