Affordable Designs in Wood

Spring is on its way...

This is the time of year to think about planting flowers or vegetables on your deck or patio.

In our rolling hills of Virginia, we have lush soil, but we also have inquisitive deer who love to sample our flowers and vegetables before we get a chance to harvest them. The same is true in other areas where deer are making a comeback.

The best way to ensure the safety of your prize flowers or tomatoes in some areas is to use a planter that is designed for use on a deck. The basic requirements are that the planter be sturdy, weather-resistant, and have a drain to carry water away from the deck.

This hexagonal planter design does all of the above and can be easily altered to suit a wide range of requirements. The same basic design can be used to construct planters of different heights.

The diameter is governed by the size of the liner that is chosen. Currently we have found 24 inch and 36 inch liners which can be used in both low and high planters.

The planters can be provided with wide decks which can be used as display area or seats.

The planters have been constructed of 1 inch thick cedar and treated wood decking. Both look smart and give relatively long service because they are insect and weather resistant. Decking was chosen for maximum service life, but any weather resistant wood could be used and the design can be implemented with boards of different widths and thicknesses.

The design is also available in a Ready-to-Assemble configuration which allows it to be shipped by UPS anywhere in the country.

The basic hexagonal planter design also makes a striking and functional above-ground fountain.

If you have a need for a planter, a fountain, or even a wading pool, send me an email and let's see what we can come up with together.

Tag: planter, patio planter

Indulge your taste for the unusual

One of my greatest pleasures is rising to the challenge of designing something I have never considered doing before.

Our client showed me this antique carousel horse and asked me to design a pedestal base for it.

My immediate reaction was to suggest an octagonal base of oak in order to match the turn-of- the-century feeling of this wonderful artifact. The client agreed on the shape and choice of wood, so our next step was to determine how large it should be.

The antique horse had been part of a traveling carousel and children would ride on it. The client did not intend for children to ride on this horse, but she wanted to make sure that the horse would not tip over if curious children attempted to play with it.

The horse is cast metal and is mounted on a tall brass pole. The horse and pole weigh about 30 pounds and the center of gravity is about 3 1/2 feet off the ground. I think the pole must have been originally stabilized by a strap near the upper end, because the pole is made of brazed strips and could not support a child without bending.

I thought we would need a heavy base with a diameter of at least 30 inches to ensure stability under normal conditions of use. My neighbor wanted the base to be as small as possible.

Our solution was to make several trial bases, each one smaller than the other until we arrived at a size that looked right and was stable. The final pedestal was 16 inches across and 3 and 1/2 inches high.

The pedestal is made of eight pieces of 1 inch white oak on a base of yellow pine and is trimmed with a facing of 3/4 inch white oak using lapped joints.

A 1 1/2 inch pipe rises up through the center of the pedestal to a height of 24 inches and provides needed stiffening for the brass tube. The pipe is secured to the underside of the pedestal by a heavy flange.

The pedestal was finished with a modified pecan stain and polyurethane varnish. Six plastic glides make it easy to move the completed assembly with no marking of the floor and no tendency to tip.

Here is the final product. It was the happy result of an imaginative collector working with a design team that likes to provide simple, yet subtle solutions for challenging problems.

A pedestal base was the ideal complement for this antique. Perhaps you have a treasure that could do with some sort of complementary enclosure or mounting arrangement, like a display case or a wall mount.

Send us an email with your ideas. We would be happy to discuss possible solutions.

David St Lawrence

You can have it your way

We present these design ideas with the hope that you will be inspired to create a design of your own. In the main, we do not sell products. We sell unique designs that are driven by customer needs.

Recently, a customer from St Louis saw this dropleaf patio/potting table and felt it would serve her needs nicely if we could make a few changes in the design.

The original design started out as a high-end potting table, but has been purchased by a number of customers for use as a patio table or as a retail display table.

David St Lawrence

The customer from St Louis had a few changes in mind which would adapt this table for use on her patio. For starters, she wanted it to be made out of cedar with enclosed sides. She wanted to retain the dropleaf design, but wanted us to add an ice container so she could serve shrimp on a bed of shaved ice. She needed space to mount small wireless speakers and wanted to be able to place her 13" TV set on the table when it wasn't being used to serve food.

With the addition of casters , the final result looked like this:



We added a nautical style hatch for the ice compartment with a pull ring handle. ^{Click on images to enlarge}

We used smooth cedar siding oriented vertically to create an art deco screen effect for the back and sides of this patio table. The table is finished on all sides for free-standing use.

Since it had to be shipped from Virginia to Missouri, it was designed for customer assembly. It was delivered by UPS in three boxes with fully illustrated assembly instructions and a set of tools. The customer assembled it in about an hour.

This is just one example of what can be done by meshing your ideas with our design and construction expertise.

David St Lawrence

Deer-Free Gardening?

Deer have an annoying habit of eating flowers just as they are ready to bloom and they wreak havoc on newly planted vegetables.

Some of our customers have asked for a container garden design that would permit deer-free gardening on their raised decks or enclosed patios. We developed a line of container gardens for plants and vegetables to complement our existing deck planter design.

The main thrust of these designs is to provide a trouble-free gardening system that would stand up to the elements and would protect wooden decks from the damaging effects of water draining from the containers. The garden tubs are equipped with drains and plastic piping to carry water safely away from decks and patios. The enclosures are constructed from decking grade cedar or treated lumber.

The photo shows a display of our products in a local hardware store. The cedar flower box planter is mounted on the wall behind the three container gardens.

The front container garden is a 38" diameter x 14" deep patio pond in a low hexagonal enclosure with a wide deck for displaying plants.

The next container garden is a 38" diameter tub in a hexagonal enclosure that is 25" high.

The third container garden is a 24" tub in a 32" high hexagonal enclosure.

All container garden enclosures are available in treated wood as shown, or cedar.  The wide deck that is shown on the patio pond is available on the other container gardens.

Prices for the container gardens range from $200 to $330, depending on wood and options selected. Price for the cedar flower box planter is $65. Many other variations in size and materials are available. These designs can be easily modified to suit almost any need. Call 434-953-6852 for details.

David St Lawrence

Affordable Designs in Wood

Box-Carts Corporation has been providing affordable designs in wood for almost a year. Our primary customers are those discriminating people who cannot find what they want elsewhere.

There are many excellent factories around the world that make wood products, but their success is based on making lots of the same things.

If you have been searching for something different, and it has to be affordable as well as unique, take a look through our collection of designs and see if any suggest a solution to your needs.

If you have been saying, "If only I could find someone to make me a box/shelf/holder.... for my collection of dolls, boots/elephant feet/duck decoys...," you should consider giving us a call. 

We will work up a design based on your requirements and provide you with an estimate of what it will cost to build, ship, and install what you need.

We also make some of our designs in ready-to-assemble configurations so that we can keep shipping costs at a manageable level.

This a trial version of our new, interactive website. All of our existing and proposed designs will be posted on this site as they are developed. When we are soliciting input on these designs, you will be able to add comments or suggestions if you wish.

If you see a design that might solve a problem for you, you will be able to email us for information.

We have new designs coming out every few weeks so you can bookmark this site and see what's new. This weblog format allows for daily updating of site content when necessary, so the designs shown here are the very latest.

UPDATE: We are finally live as box-carts.com as well as ripples.typepad.com/affordable designs. What a relief!

I look forward to hearing from you and welcome your suggestions for improving our designs and our site.

David St Lawrence