Coastal Decor – Page 2

FREE Rock Flower Garden Projects

We don’t always think of taking a plain rock and using it to decorate our yard and garden. Rocks are free so what better material to use when money is tight.

We have so many ideas for creating fun yardscapes with rocks and stones to share with you. Stones and rocks are an affordable way to create a majestic yard and garden. You just need some ideas to get you started and then the sky is the limit in what you can create. You can gather stones in your yard, at the beach, in the woods, at the park, or even purchase them.

For some of the rock garden projects we listed, you may need basic supplies like quick grout or quick cement to put in between the cracks but those items are fairly cheap to buy.

Some rock garden projects may require outdoor paint. Outdoor house paints or acrylic paints work well for these rock garden projects. My favorite paint for outdoor projects is Rust-Oleum. It really projects outdoor projects against the elements and looks great with a sleek finish. For kids, Spray Chalk paint is a good option.

Great family project!

If you have kids you can get them involved in the fun of creating a colorful rock garden and remember, it’s a free project so it’s a win-win. Let them scavenge for rocks in your yard or take a trip to a park, go hiking and make it a family event. This could even be a summer project. Start by coming up with the one project you want to create, figure out how many rocks you will need to collect. When school is out for the summer, start your project by making a making a chart to show what days you found the rocks on and where. It will make a fun record of your project and keep the kids interested for the whole summer break. By the time summer is over you will have collected rocks, painted rocks, and right before school starts again, you can assemble your rocks into a fabulous rock flower garden.

These free rock flower garden projects will put you in your happy place. They are also easy and fun to create. Go all out and fill a space in your yard with color rocks, or take ordinary rocks and make a design like a butterfly or a flower design.

Glass Gardening Art Projects

Bring your garden to life with glass garden art. Glass reflects in the sun and brings your garden alive with color. Create drama that carries over from one season to the next. Sun catchers, glass orbs, hanging glass wind chimes are just some of the ways you can enhance your garden with glass.

Glass Hummingbirds is waiting to decorate your window sill or hang in the window as a reminder of our fine feathered friends who come to our garden for a season and are gone with the chill in the air.

Glass Garden Art Balls, Orbs, or Globes – or sometimes called Gazing Balls – are making by adding colorful flat glass stones to a round sphere. A bowling ball can work for your base but since it is very heavy you may want something lighter like a child’s play ball. If you want the glass to show through you could use a round Christmas ornament. You can often find them large enough to make a glass art ball.

If you are looking for a touch of fantasy or whimsy in your garden add a sun-catcher. Maybe you want some plant bling these handmade glass garden wands are the perfect sun catcher that will beautify your garden. The bits of color will peak out from behind the leaves of your plants like little fairies.

Garden Glass Art Projects, Garden Glass Stakes — Source: Threads and Wicks

Glass bottles are useful as garden art. Recycle old bottles and add them to metal display stand and you have an instant garden art project that is simple for any DIYer.

Glass Wind chimes move in the wind so the sun plays on the glass and catches you eye everywhere you look. Use element from nature like drift wood and shells to enhance your glass wind chime.

Glass, Bead, Shell Wind Chime — Source: My Pinterventures

DIY Clay Pot Lighthouse Bird Feeders

Whether you are feeding birds to help them through the long, cold winter months or feed birds during warm weather, having a functional bird feeder will attract a lot of variety of birds to your yard. Birds are enjoyable to watch. You can attract different birds by using a variety of seeds. You will attract titmouse, finches, sparrows, and chickadees with tiny seeds like nyjer, thistle, millet, cracked corn, flax and safflower. Cardinals, blue jays, doves, thrashers, and cowbirds like black oil sunflower and larger seed mixes.

DIY Clay Pot Lighthouse Bird Feeders

Here is an idea for a cute coastal bird feeder and garden decor all in one. These lighthouse bird feeders are made using clay pots that have been glued together and then painted. Get your creative juices flowing and grab your paints because it’s time for another coastal craft project.

Clay Pot DIY Lighthouse Bird Feeder — Image Credit: Crafts by Courtney

A lighthouse bird feeder made from Terra Cotta clay pots is very easy to assemble. You can feature a lantern on top to cast a warm glow. Place it in the garden as a decoration or add the clay pot saucer on the top or bottom and fill the edges with bird seed to feed our hungry feathered friends.

Clay Pot DIY Lighthouse Bird Feeders — Image Credit: Unknown

Let these examples show you how you can take clay pots to make a lighthouse bird feeder. Add a solar light to the top. The pot’s saucer is placed on top as the bird feeder. Now you have a coastal bird feeder that is also coastal garden decor.

Not all of these Terra Cotta Pot lighthouses feature a bird feeder but you can easily change that by adding the pot saucer to the top or the bottom.

Build a Backyard Planter Bench (Free Plans)

We have a patio outside our kitchen and have been wanting to put a planter bench there for a long time but didn’t want to spend the money to buy a good quality planter. Good quality planter benches can run upwards of $1,000. Yes, you can get a planter bench for $100 that is made out of plastic but we wanted a solid wood planter bench. And yes, you can buy wood planter benches that might cost around $400 to $500 but we wanted a triple planters with 2 benches and weren’t ready to shell out $1,000! So when this happens, what is there to do about it? Make it yourself of course!

You can build this solid wood, triple planter with 2 benches for just around $200! It’s exquisite and you will be the envy of the neighborhood. Create a gathering place in your backyard. Good quality planter benches can run upwards of $1,000 of this size but you will own a solid piece of outdoor furniture for a fraction of the cost.

Following the MyOutdoorPlans.com Planter Bench Plans, we built this planter with two benches and 3 planters. We painted everything white to make it stand out on the red brick patio. We also have a two-seat bench that is white and two small white concrete planters that are white so the white paint brings the whole space together nicely.

We purchased “Everest” Sedge Grass to put in each of the planters. The variegated green and white leaves look fantastic against the white planters.

Planter Bench Plans

You can follow the bench-making plans at MyOutDoorPlans.com to create these outdoor planter benches.

Materials We Used

(12) 8’ tongue and grove pine boards
(3) 20 inch square pieces of 5/8 inch plywood
(11) 1”x4”x8’ pine boards
(4) 2”x4”x8’ boards
(3) 1”x3”x8’ pine boards
(3) solid wood corner guards
1-1/4” wood screws
2-1/2” wood screws
2-3/4” wood screws
Zinsser BIN cover stain
KILZ White primer/sealer paint
Rust-Oleum Marine Coatings Topside paint, semi-gloss

We used Zinsser BIN cover stain because we used knotty pine. Zinsser’s covers the knots and doesn’t allow them to bleed through the paint. The painting process is probably the longest process in this whole project because we used three paints – primer, Zinsser layer and 2 coats of Rust-Oleum.

It took just about one week working part-time to create one bench and two planters.

After we finished this project, we built a fire pit to put in the center of the patio. This fire pit only took about one hour to create. We have full written instructions to build your own fire pit on a companion video on our YouTube channel.

Build a Backyard Fire Pit in One Hour

It’s easy to build a backyard fire pit for fun Fall nights and hours of Smore’s enjoyment. We built our patio fire pit in just about a hour. You can buy most of the supplies you need at your local hardware store (Ace, Lowe’s, Home Depot). The supplies list is minimal and you won’t need many tools. Building a fire pit should only take you about an hour (or maybe two) to complete so it’s a quick project even beginner DIYers can complete.

Safety First! You will want to make sure your fire pit is not going to be located under any low-hanging trees. Safety is always key when setting up your fire pit.

Your first step is to decide the best spot to place your fire pit. Because you will be using Flagstone wall blocks that are heavy, you won’t be moving your fire pit anytime soon. You will want to find a permanent area to build your fire pit. Will you build in the ground or above ground? We constructed our fire pit on our patio.

Fire Pit Supplies List

If you want to build our exact fire pit, here are the supplies we used. Our fire pit measures 18 inches in diameter by 12 inches in height.

(39) Mini Flagstone Allegheny Retaining Wall Landscaping Blocks
LOCTITE Pl500 Landscape Block Adhesive Off-White Landscape Construction Adhesive
(3) Holland Red/Charcoal Concrete Pavers (bricks)
Galvanized Metal Tub
Metal Grate
Heavy duty steel file
Hammer
Concrete/Brick Chisel

About the Galvanized Tub: You can buy a galvanized metal tub from Tractor Supply, Amazon, Lowes, or even Target stores. You can substitute a galvanized tub for an actual fire ring that has been specifically designed for DIY fire pits. Fire rings are often quite large though and since we wanted to keep our fire pit smaller, we went with the galvanized metal tub.

About the Metal Grate: We had on hand an old single burner from a propane stove that we used for our metal grate. You will probably want a raised metal grate of some sort to stack the wood on to keep it from the bottom of the tub. You could use an grate from an old grill, a portable camp fire grill, or a raised fire grate. Check out the free section on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace or even your local Goodwill store and you may find something that can be used and it will save you money.

About the Retaining Wall Blocks: we used mini Flagstone Allegheny Retaining Wall Blocks to put around the galvanized tub. This created the wall for our fire pit. The common size of these blocks is 3-in x 8-in and the actual size is 3-in x 8.2-in.

Determine the Number of Landscaping Blocks Needed

To determine the number of landscaping blocks you will need to make a circular fire pit, just multiple the desired diameter by 3.14 then divide by the shortest length of the block. For the fire pit pictured, the greatest diameter was 18 inches at the top of the galvanized tub. So, 18 times 3.14 equal 56.52; 56.52 divided by 6 (which was the shortest length for the trapezoid block used) equal 9.42. If one does not have a predetermined diameter, just buy the number of blocks needed to make a circle close to the size fire pit desired without having to cut any blocks.

If you aren’t good with math equations, you can also “eye” it. You may not buy the exact number of block needed but you can always return or purchase more as needed. We purchased 39 landscaping blocks and had to cut three in half to make them fit.

Adjusting the Landscaping Blocks to Fit Properly

You may have to cut a few of your landscaping blocks to fit properly. In our fire pit we had to cut several blocks as shown in the photos. To cut a landscaping block, draw a line where it needs to be cut and then score that line using either a concrete/brick chisel; a heavy duty file; or, for more accurate cuts, a circular saw with a concrete blade. Once the block is scored, place the chisel on the score line and strike it with a hammer until the block splits.

Fire Pit Drainage

It is a good idea to drill a few holes in the bottom of the galvanized tub for drainage. You don’t want rain water collecting in the bottom of your fire pit without any place to go.

Assembling the Fire Pit

After obtaining the number of landscaping blocks needed, it is time to assemble the fire pit.

Place three concrete pavers (bricks) in the center of the area where you will construct the fire pit. The galvanized tub will sit on these pavers for support and ventilation once the fire pit is complete.

Place the galvanized tub upside down over-top of the pavers (bricks). By placing the tub upside down, you ensure that the first layer is the widest and will accommodate the largest widest of the tub when it is turned upright.

Lay the first row of blocks in the desired pattern.

Apply Landscape Construction Adhesive to the top of each block and then add the second layer of blocks. Continue these steps until the desire height is reached.

Place the metal grate inside, stack the wood and your fire pit is almost ready for use. We do suggest at that you give the Landscape Construction Adhesive 24 hours to completely dry.

Who will you share your fire pit with?