Succulent Chair

Yes, Folks!  This is a sedum chair!  And No, you can't sit on it!

I thought I would just keep sharing the things I upcycle or repurpose or deconstruct or reconstruct so you can see what kind of silly ideas I have!

Chair with mesh screen applied.

 Some of you know that I have a space at M & M Antiques in Monroe, Washington.  I rent a space to sell all crazy stuff I collect and I don't have to be there to sell it.  Oh, the beauty of it!  Anyways, those of you who do know me, know that I am a total collector, borderline hoarder, and that when you come to my house you rarely see the same thing twice.  Well, not really, but I do like to live with things for a while, see how they feel, and then recycle them thru my space at M & M when I am ready for them to find their next homes!  You all probably know that this is kinda my business.  I buy items at estate, rummage, yard, garage, tag sales and auctions, flea markets, thrift stores, and other antique stores and then I resell them.  Often, I buy things I love and want, and then when I feel I can let go of them, I sell them at the mall.  And often, I deconstruct, reconstruct or upcycle something, like this half broken chair, into something new and fabulous and then sell it.  I certainly don't make a ton of money doing this but I get to be creative and it also earns me just enough dough to spend the next month, to buy more cool junk!

Close up of seat with wire.  Just used a staple gun to adhere mesh to bottom of chair.

 I found this chair at "my" antique mall.  Melanie and Mildred are really the owners but I will say "my" here and in future posts because I am often talking about several places at once and this is just easier.  So, at my mall, the other day, here was this seatless chair, sitting outside the door, for sale, for beans.  Beans, I tell ya.  And before I even knew how cheap it was, I knew what I was doing with it.  Onward Ho with the sedum/succulent obsession!  One of the uber spectacular or seriously dangerous, depending on how you look at it, things about being a vendor at M & M is that they let us "dealer charge" anything we want.  What this means is that when I want something in the store, I just say "Dealer Charge" and the money comes out of my next months check.  See.  Uber spectacular and seriously dangerous!  I have to be careful to make sure I actually do get a check at the end of each month!  But the great thing is that you don't have to have cash up front to take what you want.  So far it has served me well, to be able to dealer charge, and I have been able to bring home some fabulous finds that I would not have been able to otherwise.

I used Gutter Guard!  I got a few rolls of this at a tag sale for about $1.  I got all they had since I envisioned it as the perfect material for this type of project.  I cut it with old dull scissors and didn't have to use wire snips.  It's not nearly as "pokey" as chicken wire.

The next garden patio project I am working on is the succulent table.  I can't wait to show you the finished product!  I found a perfect metal frame a the end of last summer and knew it was the perfect thing for this specific project I had in mind.  It has some wicker around the edges of it.... kinda hard to explain but I will have plenty of pictures for that post! 

Here is the chair, AFTER Spanish moss was layed down, when the soil was added to prepare for the sedums.  This is a fine layer of moss with a fine layer of soil added on top.  It doesn't take much and since you can fertilize it with your organic fish fertilizer throughout the season, you can get away with a small amount of soil.

After I had the chair prepped to this point, I just started going around to all the various patches of sedums and succulents in my gardens and teasing out bits and pieces here and there.  I gathered several kinds, types and colors and brought them to the chair and began laying them out.  Remember, sedums have pretty shallow root systems so I just do the "laying on" method where you just kind tuck the sedums in where you want them to be.  I arranged the seat for variation in color and texture and then gave it a little sprinkle of soil around and in between them to fill in little spaces.  Then I finished with a good watering of organic liquid fish fertilizer water and Voila!  A gorgeous little planter if I do say so myself!

Hope you readers are thinking about what you have to plant with sedums!  The possibilities are endless! 

Plant what you love, dig in the earth, imagine beauty in the disgarded and ordinary!