Hanging String Lights Around My Fire Pit! I Used Whiskey Barrel Planters

hey guys today i'm going to show you how to dress up your fire pit area or your patio and dare i say add some ambeons by hanging up these patio string lights and i'm going to do it using these planters plus i'll share some tips that will save you time money and hassle so let's get started obviously the first thing you're going to need is a planter i chose to use these half barrels as my planter for a couple reasons number one they're heavy i like that they're wide so they give a lot of stability and these are genuine jack daniels barrels which gives them the added benefit of smelling amazing i pick these barrels up at lowe's but usually they have them at tractor supply or you can even find whole barrels usually on facebook marketplace that you could cut in half yourself but they're not gonna be jack daniels let me show you my first tip on saving money my original plan was to use pipes but then everybody in the family was like what are you gonna do there's a lightning storm i don't know don't sit out in it but anyway to please them i decided to go with four by fours but then after i went and looked at the prices of four by fours and i know i keep harping on these lumber prices but they really upset me i found these landscape timbers baby yep four by fours are three and a half by three and a half these landscape timbers are two and a half by three and a half just as good for a pole to hang your lights on and they're lighter oh did i mention they're a third of the price starting off with a wide heavy stable base and a lighter pole will give us a lot more stability because at the top of this pole there's a lot of leverage and i've seen a lot of people make these where they're very tipsy and we don't want that to happen to attach the post to the planter i'm going to be using these retrofit post bases i'm going to attach two of these to each post at opposite corners [Music] and then i'm going to attach them using these quarter inch by 2 inch lag screws and for some crazy reason every individual one of these has that price tag on it you can buy these by the box this is what your post should look like after you've got both pieces on for this next part and this is really important you're going to want a couple of 20 year old really flimsy saw horses to set your heavy planter on wow that really is heavy i'm going to set the post in the center of the planter and i'm just going to eyeball this and that is a technical term and it is an actual measurement an eyeball and then i'm going to take a 3 8 inch drill bit and mark each one of these holes [Music] now i'm going to switch over to a half inch drill depth and drill all the way through [Music] i'm going to attach the bracket and the post to the bottom of the planter using these two and a half inch lag bolts washers and a nut since we're actually going to be using this as a planner in addition to holding up the post now is a good time to go ahead and drill some holes to let the water drain out from your plants now i'm going to be making five of these but just on this first one i want to drill a hole on the side near the bottom because this is where i'm going to run a cord through here i only have to do this on one of these clampers [Applause] this is already very stable i mean i almost don't even need any extra weight in the bottom of it because if you want this to come over you're going to have to knock it over and i should know because i need extra stability because if you've ever seen godzilla versus kong you kind of know what my situation is here with my dogs who love to play and wrestle out here and destroy everything all right can you come help me load these up with the bucket okay go ahead and start it up all right let me get this first one up in there that seems a little sketchy [Music] okay start it up lift it up a little bit okay let's uh let's try and move them like that okay there we go okay now i gotta go get the rest [Music] watch your fingers that you don't get there you go can you roll that one right there tip it over there you go roll it like that there you go all right let's let cameron drive the tractor back okay thank you baby thank you madison [Music] pull the bucket up sorry i had to put a hat on because it is freaking hot out here in fact siri how hot is it you could boil an egg on your forehead hot that's how hot it is you're toast okay cool yeah that makes sense i wanted to update you real quick on the 4x8 planter box that i built a few videos back using this galvanized roofing material i had some people say that there was no way that this would hold without wood frame around it i did use like a piece of a by four basically a two by two and i ran it all the way across over there we use the hugo culture i think that's what you call it method for filling this which is you fill a lot of debris down at the bottom old tree trunks and stuff like that and then you put the dirt on top of it so for us this has worked really well but for you if you want you might want to add a couple cross pieces that run from one side to the other at the bottom like two by twos next i'm just gonna put some of this waterproofing stain and sealer on all the posts [Music] this sealer calls for two thin coats well i've already got both coats on because by the time i got the first coat on and worked my way around it was drying all the way around at each post so i've already got two coats on now what i've got to do is get power over here from over there at the house now what i'm gonna do may horrify some of you i'm just going to be upfront about it i started out with this 100 foot cord then i cleared all the rocks on my rock path i cut the tarp underneath the rock next i dug underneath the framing timbers to create a tunnel then i ran the cord underneath said tunnel and underneath the rocks and as much underneath the tarp as i could then finally i covered everything back up you should probably use conduit when you do this but what can i say it's my yard and i know where the cord's gonna be now that our planters and posts are pretty much positioned exactly where we're going to want them it's time to start mixing the concrete not from the start i specifically did not want to use concrete with this plan and i'll give you a couple reasons number one if you ever want to use these planters for something later on down the road and you don't want them to hold up your lights for you you've ruined your planters because they're filled with concrete number two a lot of people are just intimidated by mixing concrete you know something about it scares them and they think they'll do it wrong or they just don't want to make that mess what what huh what did you say to me you filthy bag of concrete you don't scare me so we're going to be filling these up with concrete blocks instead why because anybody can go pick up concrete blocks and uh if concrete blocks intimidate you well all right nothing i can do for you son if you ever want to remove the concrete blocks it's easy to do and they're cheap and if you find that your concrete blocks won't quite fit simply use a persuader nice that's a good load i'm gonna be honest with you that's hot out here i'm gonna drill a hole just about uh an inch and a half down from the top right in the center of the post [Applause] then i'm going to use one of these eye screws lag screws to go in it and while i'm up here i'm going to go ahead and add one of these quick links you could also use a carabiner up here but honestly the carabiners that were available at the hardware store cost more than this and this will work exactly the same i'll just go ahead and connect that and close it up now just do that to the other four post [Music] i picked up this string installation kit but i don't really know how necessary it is for the short distance the span that i'm gonna be running these lights it's 12 feet i think the lights themselves will probably hold up just fine but this has the wire that will give it extra support and a turnbuckle zip ties and everything i think this whole kit well this kit runs 66 feet but it was 22 dollars i think for this kit and i picked this up at lowe's the reason i actually got the kit was because if i were to bought the wire by itself sometimes it's called like aeronautical wire it's just coated wire but you can buy it by the foot at hardware stores but it would cost me more to bought the linear footage that i needed uh than just buying the whole kit so i went ahead and bought the whole kit all right these came with two of these clamps for the end of it all right we're going to work i guess this works basically off of song friction put kind of what is the equivalent of a washer on there now tighten the nut down on it all right that loop is made i'm just going to take this looped end and i'm going to pass it through all of these clips that i put up here [Music] i could have attached it at the other end and ran the other way around but i like to keep it weird you know what i'm saying plus i like to tangle all this up as much as possible never mind don't do what i said do it the other way anyway you got to pass this through all these clips and now that i'm at this end i'm going to actually put the loop into the clip okay so now when i pull that that'll be attached right there i'm going to attach it eventually to this turnbuckle i want to make sure that the turnbuckle is extended so that i can tighten it up when i get done i'm just going to kind of test to see where my loop needs to be and i would say about right there so just like before i'm going to put it on this clamp because now i'm up on the ladder and in the air this clamp is going to be twice as fun to put on if you want to play a fun game go back and watch this video from the beginning and watch and you can see the point at which my skin actually begins to twist and fry it's been a hot day i won't lie to you now that i've got that done i can cut this extra cable off i can cut this extra cable off i can cut this extra cable off get off are you serious right now i feel like i feel like it's gonna happen i feel like there's gonna be a breakthrough here in a minute like literally it's gonna break through and it's gonna break yeah i told you see see you doubted me just gonna loop that over like that i'm gonna tighten up a little and now all i have to do is tighten this turnbuckle a couple of things i want to do first before i hang the lights is get rid of these ugly white tags okay so wow that was easy next up is where they connect i want to put now there's two different things you can do here they sell these cord protectors and basically what they do is they help hold everything together and they make it waterproof you just put both in one end of each cord in there and close it up and it's good but this thing's kind of big and it's green so i don't want to use that what i do have here is a piece of shrink tube you see that shrink tube and i'm going to try it one thing it'll help hold everything together and it'll keep the water out now i'm thinking that i can probably just hold this against the back of my neck and that'll be enough heat to make it shrink but just in case i'm going to use the heat gun each one of these sockets above where the socket hangs is a little hole now you could have just run the wire through this but then that would have given you less control so i'm going to put a zip tie to each one of those starting right here and i'm actually going to put this through the loop so that it holds it in place [Music] [Music] lights are in place i've got my extension cord that will eventually be covered up with all the pine straw out here so if you'll remember on the one planter i drilled that big hole there i drilled that big hole i'm gonna run that through there and then i'm gonna come up the post and i'm gonna plug in right there but actually even before i plug into right there i'm gonna put one of these i'm gonna put one of these shrink tubes on there again i could only find this green cord and the time frame i wanted and i did find this plastic casing wire casing and what i'm going to do is cover up my cord with this let me assure you if you can find a black cord just find the black cord because that was a serious pain now i'm going to be putting these wire clamps on and then i dropped my screws and i dropped my clamp okay so i'm gonna be putting these wire clamps on to hold the cord there at this point kim took the project over and filled all the planters up with dirt and flowers now i don't know about you but i think these are just absolutely lovely we did run into a small problem we bought a ton of flowers but as it turns out we only bought enough flowers for two and a half planters but we'll work with what we got for now and fill the rest up later so after a lot of sweat and frankly probably a few layers of skin i'm really happy with the way that it turned out i love the way the string patio lights look around my patio even though it's technically not a patio it's my fire pit area however i will say there are a few things i think my fire pit area still needs like maybe some concrete tables and probably a grilling station but as for next week who knows i may be in the hospital recovering from severe sunburn

Channel: HAXMAN

Views: 528,338

Rating: 4.9491706 out of 5

Keywords: patio string lights, hanging patio lights, hanging string lights, how do you hang patio string lights, fire pit lighting, whiskey barrel planters, ultimate whiskey barrel planters, haxman

Id: WgBczx3ieYs

Length: 18min 0sec (1080 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 09 2021