Bakers Rack To Potting Bench - Create Make Decorate with Nikki

You know the old saying, “One mans trash is another mans treasure?” That is truly the story of this piece of furnitures makeover. I have always loved Bakers Racks, but I’ve never really had the space for one in my home. When the chance came up for me to get this one, I couldn’t pass it up. After all, it was FREE!!!

I’ll be honest here, it sat on my back patio for quite sometime. I knew that someday I would figure out a way to use it. I was surfing around on Pinterest one day and saw some super cute potting benches. At that moment I decided that this bakers rack was going to be transformed into a potting bench! Next, I just had to figure out how I was going to make that happen.

Off to Lowes I went to purchase some materials. I had a vision in my mind of how I wanted this potting bench to look. A little French Country meets rustic industrial.

MATERIALS:

1x6x6 picket fence pieces. (6 total)
1×4’s (4 total)
1×2’s (4 total)
White paint
Power drills
Screws
1 sheet of corrugated metal
Bakers Rack

I first started by taking the picket fence pieces and drilling them onto the back of the bakers rack. By the way, that’s my hunky hubby in the back. 😊

Turning a bakers rack into a potting bench. Picket fence wood drilled onto the back with shelving.

Let me apologize for the lack of pictures and the quality here. I got so busy and involved in the project, that I forget to take them. What I did next was take the 1×4’s and placed them on top of the existing shelves that were there, securing them with screws. Taking the 1×2’s, I simply framed the top and bottom shelves around the perimeter of the 1×4’s.

bakers rack turned potting bench. White shelves and corrugated metal for top.

On to the roof!!

Now it was time to figure out the little roof area that I wanted to create. I took the 1×2’s and made a rectangular frame. You can see it kind of hanging on the top here in the photo above. I needed to create a base to be able to hang the frame. What I did was take 2 1×4’s and measured them to length of the top of the bakers rack, where the picket fence pieces are. Using my drill, I screwed them into the picket fence pieces.

I was able to take the rectangular frame and secure it to those pieces. Next, I took a piece of the 1×2 and used it between that picket fence piece and the rectangular frame, creating an A FRAME. You can see this from the side view in the picture. This is my first time building something like this and I will tell you that I was pretty much “winging it” as I went. Thankfully, it worked! LOL

I measured out the corrugated metal and cut it out with my skill saw and secured it to the top with some screws.

Bakers rack turned into a potting bench. White shelving made out of 1x4's with a corrugated metal roof.

To finish it off, I used some exterior white paint and painted the shelves and drawers white.

Bakers rack turn potting bench. Close up of white shelves made with 1x4's.

I absolutely LOVE the way this turned out! It was exactly what I had visioned in my head. It reminds me of a little French Country Flower Potting bench.

Next time you see one of these Bakers Racks, don’t pass it up! Perhaps you have one already and maybe you don’t know what to do with it anymore. Don’t throw it away! Give it a makeover and WHOLE NEW LIFE and PURPOSE. You can see how easy it is to transform it from a bakers rack to a potting bench in no time at all.