DIY Fresh Flower Wall (Part I)

Posted on by Just Rent It! Malaysia

I was dead set on having a fresh flower wall for my dais, and from the quotes I had gotten it would’ve cost me double (for artificial flowers) or triple (for mix) or quadruple (all fresh flowers) of what I had ended up paying for the whole setup just by DIY-ing the most expensive part of it!

If you’re curious to see how much I ended up paying for this fresh flowers wall, watch out for my post next week for the budget breakdown. But in this post, I’ll be sharing with you guys what I had built to make this fresh flower wall possible.

THE FRAME STRUCTURE

What I used:

2 pieces of 8’x4’ plywood
32 L-brackets
Screws (length depends on the thickness of your plywood)
Nails

How I built it:

  1. From the 3 pieces of plywood, I had a friend cut out these strips:
    • 4 pieces of of 96” x 4” strip
    • 16 pieces of 48” x 4” strip
    • 4 pieces of 96” x 12” strip

1. Each frame structure consists of

  • 2 pieces of 96” x 4” strip (for the vertical side rails)
  • 8 pieces of 48” x 4” strip (for the shelving)
  • 2 pieces of 96” x 12” strip (for extra support at the back)

2. Secure the L-brackets with screws in the middle of the 48” x 4” strips on both ends, once you’ve done that for all of those strips get the 96” x 4” vertical side rail strips and screw in the shelves on them at 12” intervals. After screwing the shelves in, I also nailed in the shelves (but away from the L-brackets) for extra support.3. Once all the shelves and top and bottom rail was secured on the side rails, I nailed in the 2 pieces of the 96” x 12” strip at the back (I didn’t measure this and just eye-balled that the 2 pieces were evenly distributed). And you’re done for the frame!

 Time for built: 1 day to get the plywood and have it cut, and another day to build both frames.

PREPPING THE WET FOAM WALL

If you’re using fresh flowers, you need to use those green wet foams that holds water in them so that your flowers stay fresh and hydrated from the beginning of the fresh flower wall construction till the end of your event. Since the frame that I made was made from plywood and is an organic material, I didn’t want the foam to get the plywood wet and damage it (the plywood was planned to be repurposed after the event).

I had bought a rough estimation of how many wet foam bricks that I needed and lots and lots of aluminium foil. I had individually wrapped the wet foam after soaking it in a bucket of water. I’d suggest buying good quality alumium foil so that it minimizes the amount of aluminium you’d need to use (since using lower quality alumium makes you use more to layer up till the wet foam is water tight). I bought my foil from Bake with Yen, since they are affordable and of really sturdy quality.

SECURING THE FRAME ONTO THE WALL

 What’s needed:
The frame structure
Nylon rope
Scissors
Wrapped wet foam
Chicken coop wire
Wire cutter
Staple gun

How I did it:

  1. Raise both of the frame structure against the wall, I decided to screw both structures to each other. Since the wall I was propping up against has a metal-grille-window-thing I didn’t need to build a base for the frame, but instead I had used nylon rope to tie the frame to the metal-grill-window-thing. Just make sure you tie it up securely enough till there are minimal movement, since you’re loading it up with what will be very heavy wet foam bricks plus fresh flowers. Surprisingly, this system was sturdy enough!
  2. Once the frame is secured to the wall, I had stacked the wet foam bricks on each shelf till it fills up the whole space, start from the bottom. That ranged from 3 to 4 bricks on each shelf, since apparently I didn’t space the shelves evenly (hah!).
  3. After each shelf gets filled up, I had secured the foam onto the shelf by stapling some nylon rope in a zig-zag formation to make sure that the foam won’t topple on top of me as I worked my way up (I only did this for the lower levels and you’ll know why in the next step).
  4. Once I was done stacking the foam bricks, I took the chicken coop wire and stapled it onto the frame against the foam. Because I was doing this, I had only used the nylon rope to secure the bottom levels. I could’ve probably used the nylon rope to secure the stacks till the top, but I felt safer using the chicken coop wire since it ensures that the foam brick is completely secured. Once you’ve stapled (I may have gone trigger happy with the staple gun) the chicken coop wire to the frame, your wet foam frame structure is ready for the fresh flowers!

Time for this: Half a day to soak and individiually wrap the wet foam, another half a day to secure the frame on the wall and fill them up with the foam.

My oh my, this is one long post.. I thought I could share the whole entire process in one post but it’s getting super long isn’t it? So, I’ll break it into two parts and share the actual fresh flower wall construction in the next post. So, stay tuned!