How to make a DIY water feature / outdoor table for your garden.

Well, this has been a VERY popular project of mine over on Instagram and I’m so happy to be able to inspire so many people to get creative at a time like this.

Last year, I made a garden side table and plant stand out of a concrete bird bath and some terracotta pots, inspired by some fairly pricey ones from Anthropologie and since then I’ve had an abundance of messages from people asking me if I’ve got a tutorial on how to make them? Which sadly I didn’t have, so this year I thought I’d make some more and give you guys a step by step guide on how you can make your own.

My DIY version…

Made out of these…

This all started after I bought a solar powered water fountain pump from eBay (aff link), that after posting on my Instagram stories, over 1200 people swiped up on. Looks like we all love a water feature!

In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to make your very own bird bath, side table or plant stand for your garden. Who’s excited?

Ok lets begin…

The first thing you’ll need are some terracotta pots. Now when working out the size, your best bet is to go to the garden centre and stack them to see what works best, just make sure they’re not too tall and slim otherwise the table will be top heavy. This actually happened to me which luckily I overcame by gluing a terracotta plate underneath to stabilise it.

If you can’t get to a garden centre and need to buy online, then go for pots that are around 23cm tall. You will need 2 of these.

The other thing you will need is a terracotta saucer, these come in different sizes too so it really depends on what you want your table to look like, mine are 35cm in diameter.

Next up, you’ll need to glue your 2 terracotta pots, base to base using Gorilla glue, which I think is amazing. You’ll need to make the area damp with a sponge first and be careful not to put it too close to the edges as it expands quite a lot as it dries. Please note, you’re not gluing the saucer on at this point because it makes it easier to paint the pedestal without it.

Now you wait, 1-2 hours for the glue to set.

Once it’s dry you’re good to start painting. I used Cuprinol paint as it’s suitable for terracotta and obviously outdoors, but there are other paints available. The good thing about Cuprinol is that you can buy tester pots, which is more than enough paint to be able to complete this project.

I did a striped effect in pink and white and the green table I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, so I just made it up as I went along. I’m happy with the results though.

Once you have painted the pedestal you can then glue on the saucer. I did this upside down to make it easier to see what I was doing. I then left the glue to set.

You can now paint the saucer. If you’re stuck for ideas pop, ‘circular patterns’ in to Pinterest and you could use one of those as a guide.

When all the painting is done you need to seal the saucer if you’re planning on putting water in it because terracotta is very porous.

To seal, I used water proof PVA bond, which you can find in any DIY store, 3 parts PVA to 1 part water and applied it with a sponge. I then sprayed some lacquer spray over the top as I had some in the cupboard, this part isn’t essential though.

Once dry, you can add water and pop your solar powered fountain pump in if you want a water feature. Of course, you can use it as a handy side table or even pop a plant on it.

I hope I’ve inspired you to make your own outdoor tables as they really do look beautiful.

If you enjoyed this post, I’d love it if you could share it please.

Until next time,

Hayley