RE-PURPOSED IRONING BOARD AND CHAIR PLANT STAND

In this blog post, I cover how I re-purposed an old cheap metal ironing board and a dining chair to make this cool plant stand. The ironing board sits in a slot cut into the chair and serves as a climbing plant support. The chair is made a tad smaller and more delicate – it only needs to support the weight of the ironing board and a plant, not a fully grown human!

THE PLAN

The idea for this Frankenstein’s monster was born because I had grown a little attached to an old, broken ironing board. It’s not a fancy one, just a typical metal cheapo you can get from any local junk shop for £10. But I’ve had it for so many years and kept using it for so long after the legs completely broke off that I got a little sentimental about throwing it out when I finally got a replacement. If you look at an ironing board like this one underneath the fabric cover, the metal mesh used is actually quite pretty. It does look like a trellis. So I originally thought I could just stick it on the wall and plop a shelf underneath to hold the plant. But I also had a few unused wooden dining chairs hanging about from when I converted our old dining table into a desk. So I thought why not use one of them and make a freestanding plant stand with a trellis instead?

MATERIALS & TOOLS REQUIRED

STEP 1: REMOVING THE BACK OF THE CHAIR

To begin with, I had a good look at how the chair is actually put together. Once I identified how I could take it apart, I unscrewed the seat and cut off the back support from the chair frame. Essentially at this stage, I was trying to turn the chair into a stool. In the final photo you can see how I cut off the chair back below the seat – but level with the rest of the chair frame.

STEP 2: CUTTING DOWN THE CHAIR SEAT

With the back support gone, I decided to cut the chair seat down by cutting off the sticky outy back part because we no longer have a chair back to protrude past the seat there. I simply flipped the chair to check that the back portion of the frame could still fit well if I cut the sticky outy bit off. It could. So I drew a straight line across and used a handsaw to cut the seat. This of course meant that the seat was now much shorter than the frame but this is ok. We don’t want a plant stand that is too long anyway.

STEP 3: CUTTING A SLOT INTO THE CHAIR TO HOLD THE IRONING BOARD

Now, before making the chair seat/ plant stand top even smaller, I decided to cut the groove which would allow the ironing board to sit in it without toppling over. The way I measured it was:

• measure how wide the ironing board is at the point of where it will stick out from the chair. This is how long the slot needs to be. My ironing board sits about 15cm into the chair. Note that if your ironing board is not curvy but is a giant rectanlge, this will not work as once you cut the slot, it will just fully fall through. You need an ironing board that is pointy on one end and this is the end that should slot into the chair. I think all ironing boards are like that by default, I have never seen one that is different.
• measure how thick the ironing board is. This is how wide the slot needs to be.

I didn’t try to do it too perfectly as I thought if I cut it a little smaller, I can always expand it out a bit. I laid the chair seat on the floor, put the chair frame on it and drew around the back part. Then, I removed the frame and drew the measurement I took from the ironing board where I thought it would sit nicely. There was no math here, I simply eyeballed it and made sure that the distance to the chair edge on the left and right of the slot was equal. I do suggest that you don’t put it too far back on the chair seat. The ironing board is quite heavy so if it’s slotted in too far back, the chair may topple. Mine seems to be stable so far.

In terms of cutting the actual slot. I used a wooden drill bit to make a hole at each edge of the rectangle I drew. Then I used a coping saw to cut the slot out. It was very uneven so I used a sharp stanley knife to gently carve it a little neater. It doesn’t need to be perfect because you really can’t see it once the ironing board is in place anyway.

STEP 4: CUTTING DOWN THE CHAIR LEGS

Now that the board could be fit into place, I went about finishing off the plant stand. First, I cut the chair seat even more. This time from the front. I just measured how far forward I wanted it to come, drew a straight line and cut it with my handsaw.

The legs/ frame of the chair were now way too big for the top. I tried to take them apart so I could shorten the side parts. However, the sides of the legs were solidly glued in so I decided to just cut them fully off. Then I screwed the front and back legs (which were now not attached to each other) back to the chair using the original fixings.

STEP 5: FINISHING THE PLANT STAND

To finish the plant stand, I reattached what was left of the chair legs and used wood filler to hide the ugly saw cut marks I accidentally made while cutting off the side pieces. I sanded the top of the plant stand back to the original wood and stained this using the Osmo polyx wood oil. The legs I painted using some old wood paint I had lying around from a previous project. And the ironing board got a nice spray of champagne gold metal spray paint from Amazon.

THE RESULT

I love the result. It’s super quirky and a bit random but looks very cute with my new Monstera plant.