I had a minor annoyance with the kitchen window in my apartment. The window faces east and normally gets pretty good natural light when I’m home in the mornings on the weekend. The issue is that the window faces into my apartment complex and directly at another unit’s window. I don’t like keeping the blind open out of respect for the across neighbor and to maintain some privacy for myself.

I had the idea to find a way to hang some plants in the window to serve as a sort of natural blind. I figured if I could hang 2-3 plants in the window, I’ll be able to keep the blind open while maintaining some privacy.

There were a few constraints. I wanted to have the plants hung roughly 4″-6″ off the face of the wall, I needed a way to support ~25 pounds of hanging plants, it needed to span the whole ~5′ wide window, I wanted to have some flexibility of how many plants and their spacing, and I was hoping it would fit in with my apartment decorations aesthetically.

I considered using a heavy duty curtain rod, but the options I saw at home depot were limited in how far they would be from the face of the wall and also didn’t seem sturdy enough for the application. I decided instead I would hang a shelf above the window and find a way to hang plants from there. I thought some sort of rod (similar to a closet hanging rod) would be good. I ended up not finding a good option for that either, so I settled on drilling 7 holes throughout the shelf and using I hooks to hang the plants from. I’m pretty satisfied with how it came out.

Building process

I first got a 1″x6″x6′ board, 2x shelf brackets, and I hooks from home depot. The rest of the items I needed I already had on hand. That included heavier duty mounting hardware, wood stain, and required tools such as a router, drill, circular saw, level, etc.

I cut the board down to the dimensions I needed, then used the router to round all of the outward facing edges. I always find it difficult to get good lumber at home depot, it inevitably is not perfect. I always try to consider what edges will be most visible when picking which sides will be facing out and up/down. In this case, there was a little piece missing out of it, since the shelf is mounted high up, I had that be on top so it’s out of sight. I also ensured the stain on the bottom was applied most evenly since that would be more visible.

Once the wood was cut, rounded, then stained, it was ready to mount. This was a little difficult to mount since it was pretty high up, luckily I had some help putting this one up. The last step was putting in the I hooks and adding a plant. I’m not really sure what I’ll store on the shelf since it is pretty high up, it’s not easy to access. Another slight issue is the I hooks have a little washer and nut on top of the shelf so the surface is uneven. I don’t really want to put too much weight on the shelf, it might only a few items in the end.