DIY Christmas Tree Platform

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Every year at Christmas I strive for a nice display of presents under the tree and every year it seems that we never trim enough of the branches off the tree and the branches end up touching the floor. And because we get a real tree every year I knock tons of needles off trying to water the tree on my hands and knees and carefully move presents around. And so I decided we needed DIY Christmas tree platform.

As you may remember from last week I am participating in the Deck the Home Blog Hop and this week’s theme is Wooden Project. Check back here for last week’s door decor. You can find links for all the other wooden projects at the bottom of this post.

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So I decided to make a functional but decorative tree platform for our tree stand to sit on. This way all the presents will fit under and it will make it easier to water with hopefully minimal disruptions of needles.

I know there has been a trend the last couple of years of trees with baskets and galvanized collars to go around the tree trunks/stands but I knew that wasn’t going to work well with trying to keep the tree watered thoroughly, at least in my opinion.

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Step 1: Build the Tree Platform

As I mentioned about we used scrap wood that I found in my parents’ barn. The size of your wood will all depend on the dimensions that you want your box to be in the end. We have 8′ ceilings in our house so I didn’t want the box to sit too far off the ground. The exact dimensions of the platform we built are: 17.5″ x 20″x 9″. We also made sure our Christmas tree stand would be well supported on this platform so keep that in mind.

Justin also chose to add bracing to all the inside corners and between the opening at the bottom since the bottom is hollow. The bracing wood was just some small scraps that we found in our shop.

Step 2: Staining Wood

The variety of wood stains available nowadays is vast. I have multiple stains on hand but I immediately was drawn to the barn red stain by Rust-Oleum that I had used when I was at the Haven Conference. It is the perfect red for Christmas. I applied 2 coats of stain to all sides with a rag. I prefer to apply stain with a rag as I feel I have more control over the stain but you could also do this with a foam brush or a stain brush.

Step 3: Adding Trim

After we finished the box I knew it was missing something. I thought some trim wood painted a different color would look nice. I again went to my parent’s and found some trim that I initially wanted to whitewash. However, when I started picturing the platform with the tree on top I thought white paint might distract too much so I went to my paint stash and found the DecoArt Americana Metallics in Ivory Pearl to add a luster that wasn’t so bright. I applied 2 coats and there is still some wood that you can see through those 2 coats but I liked the rustic look that this gave it. I would apply 3 if you don’t want any wood grain showing.

Justin helped me by using the brad nailer to put the entire box together and add the trim. Once the trim was on I painted the cut ends so that they would blend in with the rest of the trim.

Now seeing as though it is still November we don’t actually have our Christmas tree yet. But because I wanted to show a pretty finished product in use I took my new pencil tree and placed it on the platform. (We usually go after Thanksgiving to get our tree.) So the real test of the platform will be here in a couple of weeks. I will update this final picture once our real tree is in place.

An added plus in doing this I realized is that we don’t have to buy a tree that is as tall as our ceiling!

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