Plant Ladder Shelves

This project was commissioned by a colleague with a budding plant collection. She was a big fan of the pallet wood aesthetic and loved its sustainability. As someone with an expanding number of plants and limited square footage in her apartment, some plant ladder shelves were the way to go!

Once she sent the dimensions she wanted my way, first stop was the sketch and calculations to figure out shelf spacing and angles of the legs as well as the depth of each shelf (we meet again, Pythagoras).

The good news for this design was that I had enough pallet wood on-hand from a previous teardown session to pull of the whole project. I particularly liked a few pieces of wood I pulled off the last batch of pallets that had a live edge to it. It its raw form, the edges can make it seem like the wood is un-usable, but after a thorough sanding, they cleaned up quite nicely. For rustic pieces like this, I generally leave the wood unfinished, but sand everything to be sure there are no splinters etc. that could do harm. Aside from the math to calculate the angles and depth of each shelf, the assembly is usually straightforward and in this particular case the client was in love with the rustic feel!