Plant Stands

My daughter likes to grow Aloe Vera plants. When she moved out years ago, she left us a large Aloe plant. It's nickname is Squishy.

Recently, Michelle moved back home. While she was gone, Squishy had grown out of control. The pot was packed with Squishy and all his offshoots. Michelle and her mother re-potted the various offspring to four other pots.

Summer was coming and it was time for Squishy's and its sons and daughters to move to the front porch. We have one big pot and four smaller pots that need to be on plant stands. We only had two plant stands. Fortunately, I saw these fancy pedestals while walking around the neighborhood. They needed some TLC but in the end, they turned out pretty nice.

Original Condition

After Clorox Cleanup and Elbow Grease

Patch, Repair, and Paint

The pedestals seem to be a fiberglass shell around a wooden frame. Both pedestals had cracks around the top. One of the pedestals also had cracks around the bottom. Other than patching a fiberglass sailboat the family had when I was in high school, I do not have much experience with fiberglass repair.

The approach taken was to stabilize the cracks and then patch them with bondo. Bondo is a product used in auto body work. It is like wood putty for cars. Another approach would be to use some kind of mesh tape and apply fiberglass to it. If I needed lots of structural strength and had to worry about the pedestals flexing I would take that approach. But, the plant stands will sit on the porch all summer and sit in the garage or basement all winter. They will only be moved twice a year. The hope is that gluing, followed by bondo will be good enough.

To stabilize the cracks I bought a bottle of Gorilla Glue. One of my favorite tools is a glue syringe. I used it to get the glue in as far as possible in to the cracked areas. I clamped where practical. For some of the cracks I relied on Gorilla Glue's tendency to expand while curing.

As advertised, the glue did expand quite a bit. I sanded down the bulging glue and applied the bondo.

Bondo sets up and dries quickly. After mixing the paste and hardener I had less than 5 minutes to apply the bondo to the cracks. It was sand-able in less than an hour. I did three apply bondo and sand cycles to get the cracks patched to a "good enough" state.

For the painting step, I used Rust-Oleum Universal Bonding Primer and White Satin Protective Enamel. Overall I was pleased with the results.