Each winter, my mom brings in a few plants so they don’t die from the cold temperatures. She has a little square card table she sets them on in the spare room at her house. While visiting last year, I noticed she would just turn the overhead light on in the room for a good portion of the day. I thought a grow light would be the perfect birthday gift for her last month, complete with it’s own little stand. Actually, it’s a big stand, but the great thing about it is it’s light weight and takes up very little extra room.
This was really easy to make. All I needed to purchase were 2 pieces of 2 x 2 x 8 pine.
I used a pocket hole and 2 1/2″ pocket screw to attach the main vertical piece to the main horizontal piece.
For the side pieces of the base, I just used wood glue to glue them in place. The grow light I purchased is extremely light weight, so the stand didn’t have to be heavy duty.
I pre-drilled the screw holes to attached the top piece. I didn’t have 2 1/2″ wood screws or I would have used them instead of the pocket hole screws. I painted the stand, and with them being up so high, no one will really see them anyway.
This was my first project {ever} in which I had to cut wood pieces at an angle, which I did for the 2 support beams, one on top and one at the bottom. I used my miter saw and made 45° cuts on each end.
The bottom support beam wasn’t as flush against the main vertical piece as I had hoped, but I pre-drilled the holes for the 2″ screws while holding the piece in place to make sure I was drilling in the direction that would allow the screw to go into the main piece through the support beam.
Next I filled in the pocket holes using pocket hole plugs and wood filler and went over the screws with spackle. {sorry the pictures are so blurry}
All that was left was priming and painting!
I used some paint I already had, so I didn’t have to buy another color. This is what the painters used for our dining room last May {it looks a lot more yellow in the dining room}.
The total height is 6 feet (72″) and total width is 24″. It was definitely a challenge trying to get it into my Mustang for transport! LOL
I didn’t know exactly how tall I should make it because I didn’t know how tall the table and plants were. In hindsight, I wish I’d made it about a foot shorter, but this works. She’s been using it for a month now, and the plants are doing great! I actually just purchased two more of these grow lights (you can purchase them from Amazon) for my seed-standing grow light stand I am building right now. I love they are light weight, don’t get very hot, and use fluorescent T5 bulbs, which are ideal for plants.
