We just finished a little weekend project that I've had in mind for two and a half years! Back when we first bought our house, it had this wooden gutter over our bay window. As you can see, it wasn't really doing much of a great job as gutter. We took it down when we had all of the new gutters installed. It's extremely sturdy and well built, so I knew at some point I would love to repurpose it.
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I hit the jackpot on a clearance plant sale a couple of weekends ago and got a lot of herb plants. One of the things I have missed most about our old house is my well established herb garden. We don't have a garden plot cleared yet, so I figured a small herb garden in the gutter, repurposed as a planter, would be a good interim solution. This porch is close to the kitchen, so it will be convenient for cooking. The gutter was pretty substantial and I was surprised at the number of plants that ended up fitting in it.
The gutter needed a little bit of work before we used it. We cut a piece of wood to fit to plug the hole that used to be the downspout and caulked it in place.
It already had these giant lag bolts running through it that used to attach the gutter to the house. So before we installed it, my husband cut them off and added a square of scrap metal to it to help keep the whole thing stable.
Then we bolted it to the porch posts with giant bolts. You can tell a lot of our work happens at night by the light of headlamp. Because we have four kids and late at night projects is how we roll.
I have a stockpile of odds and ends that I pick up for next to nothing when I find them, so I had these two brackets from Hobby Lobby that were mismatched in color, but the same shape. I gave them a quick coat of black spray paint and them we added them for a little interest, even though they aren't needed structurally.
Because this is installed over a bed of rocks that we don't want a lot of soil running down onto, we lined the whole thing with weed matting material, stapling it in place.
I filled it with lots of soil and then those plants! I researched what flowering plants paired well with herbs because I envisioned flowers and trailing plants. Marigolds, petunias, and sweet potato vines joined the basil, mints, dill, parsley, lemon balm, and rosemary.
I'm excited to see it once all of the plants have grown in and are trailing. In the meantime, I'm glad something so well built and useful as this wooden gutter didn't go to waste. It's always fun to look around at what you have on hand already and figure out a new way to use it! It can save a ton of money too!
