Table with inset greenhouse

A friend gave me a little Fro mini greenhouse from IKEA a while back. I was uninspired with what to do with it until I put it together with the new side table I wanted to make, and then I thought: wouldn't it be cool to have this greenhouse inset into a table? The answer was clearly "yes."

This instructable will be focused on insetting this particular object, but you could do pretty much any shape in the same way.

What you'll need for this:

1 big board for the table top, good wood:22.5 x 17 x 1 3/8
4 legs: 1 3/4 square, however high you want it, in this case 29 inches
4 hangar bolts
4 threaded inserts
1 nut
1 Fro mini greenhouse

1 thin flat, straight piece of scrap wood
some scrap MDF and/or plywood
some clamps

Tools you need:
Router, 5/8ths bit
Drill and related accoutrements (variety of bit sizes)
Drill press
Sander and sandpaper
Circular saw and/or mitre saw
Woodworking tools for chiseling the corners

Step 1 Make your measurements

First it's important to make sure all your pieces of wood, etc. are square. You can check this by measuring the diagonals. If your table top isn't square, you'll want to square it yourself. If it's too large, you'll want to cut it down to size, as

Next, mark out the places you are going to rout. Here I'm making a space for the greenhouse and two inset coaster type areas The greenhouse, miraculously, was square, so we could just trace its footprint where we wanted it (1 inch from the sides and the back). The coasters we also traced from a can of rubber glue or something. The coasters are approximately the size of the largest possible cup or bottle anyone would want to use.

Comments

[illdoyourdrugs]

This is really cool. nice job

[Solderguy]

I have the same cacti you have. :D You can add some moss for ground cover.

[aristocob]

Your soil and plants will put-out quite a bit of H2O, so you might want to consider a good Spar varnish on the inside. In fact, the outside will also benefit form some UV protection so this would be just as important on the outside too. Nice job and good luck in the next round. Scott

[solmstea]

Thanks for the advice! I have never heard of Spar varnish, but I will certainly look into that. It is likely to be a work in progress, so it will hopefully improve with time. Thanks!

[gmjhowe]

Nice. good work!