Front Porch Display - Well It Really Could Go Anywhere
by
Lisa L Hall
9 Materials
$50
2 Days
Medium
After posting a project that was to fill my front porch display, I had a lot of questions on how to build my display. It was super easy and has a ton of variations that you can do with it.
I used an old delivery pallet from a furniture delivery. If you don't have one, you can easily make one out of 1x4s. I also used chicken wire, glass tiles and wood slats.
I chose to fill my display with the chicken wire since I knew I wanted to hang things inside, but if you wanted to make it into a mirror, chalkboard, or dry erase board you can.
The cost of this can range from $40-120 depending on what you have on hand. I had a lot of this on hand. If you do want to build your own frame, don't get expensive wood, you are covering it. Get a basic 1x4 that is 8 ft long. Ask your hardware store to cut it for you. If you do 5 foot pieces you will get nice 3 foot pieces that you can use for the top and bottom.
PS...I am going to be reseting the glass tiles onto the wood planks with silicone adhesive....The Texas sun is doing a number on the tile set.
This is the basic set up of the pallet. You can see that it would be very simple to make yourself, if you needed to. Since I was covering the entire pallet with tiles and additional wood I didn't need to clean it up, paint over it or do any prep to it. My pallet is 5 foot x 18 inches. If you are making it yourself, you can adjust your dimensions.
These are the glass tiles. I found mine at Costco and a box of 10 sheets was $26. I didn't need all of the sheets but that was the best price. You will need a glass tile cutter as you can see the edges are not straight. These pieces fit together like a puzzle so it's super easy to put it together.
Make sure you lay all of your tile prior to putting the thin set on the board. You don't want to have to make adjustments in a hurry before the thin set dries. Measure everything twice before you cut it. The sheets are normally 1 sq st so you will need to cut them lengthwise as well as cut the tiles for the top and bottom so it's a straight line.
Once you have your pattern and pieces ready to set, go ahead and put on enough thin set to do one sheet of tiles. Repeat until you have gotten to the bottom. Now this part was a little tricky as you will have the variations. I did have to cut small individual tiles to fill in some of the spaces at the top and bottom. It wasn't hard.
I let the tiles set over night before I put on the grout. The grout is just a standard premixed grout. Follow the instructions on the container and you won't have any problems.
So here is the finished tile work. You can also see that my pallet has a support bar.. I removed this before adding the chicken wire and it does not affect the strength of the piece.
Once I removed that piece, I then used a staple gun and put the chicken wire in the center. I also ran the chicken wire up over the top so I could pull it really tight.
Once that was done I wanted to cover the top and bottom where I wrapped the chicken wire, so I just used some wood shims and Gorilla glue.
I did add some stain to the wood shims so it would match the colors a bit better.
Here is the finished project. The chicken wire is hard to see so I'm hoping if you enlarge the photo it will be more clear. I just use small clothes pins to hold on my decorations. It was really easy but keep in mind that the wood pieces have some weight behind them but when you add all of those glass tiles, the weight really adds up fast. Mine came in around 60 lbs so it wasn't terribly hard to get it from the back yard to the front porch. The glass tiles are tough but if you drop this, they will break.
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2 of 9 comments
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Yes I will. I want to make one for Christmas.
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Hey y'all....This project is now a year old. I am going to be resetting the tile onto the wood pallet with silicone adhesive. The Texas sun is doing a number on the tile set...Tile set is truly not made for outside. So in case you are going to put it on your porch, you can use tile set if you are north or south facing, but not east or west. Just track your sun and see if your porch gets any direct sun and for how long.
I really should have known since from May through Oct we can use the front door handle without a hot pad. Ha ha.
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