Silly Saturday: Christmas Tree Stand

When I blipped our trip to the woods for our Christmas tree on Wednesday, some kind fellow blippers made nice comments about my reference to our home-made Christmas Tree stand. So I thought I'd let you see it in action, in all its Heath-Robinson glory.

It's based around a commercial stand - a red plastic pot with black plastic legs which we bought many years ago. However that didn't prove very successful. It had a disc with a hole in the centre for the tree trunk - the disc clipped into the top of the pot and then one pushed wedges into the hole around the trunk to stabilise it. The trouble was, when I pushed them in hard enough to make the tree safe and secure the disc cracked. And the hole wasn't big enough for most trunks anyway.

Hence the construction of the wooden stand into which the pot (+ its legs) fits nicely. The 4 slats can be screwed to the sides wherever they're needed to give a secure support to the tree, regardless of how thick the trunk is. Following a "belt & braces" approach I now generally attach the trunk to the slats with angle brackets just to be really sure but for years I didn't bother and we never had a problem. A funnel allows the water in the pot to be topped up easily.

It's not very pretty - in fact it looks rather silly (so it's suitable for Silly Saturday) - but we cover it in foil or Christmas wrapping paper and then it looks fine.

It must now be at least 15 years old and it's still growing strong. (And for blip buddy Flashcube: it lives in the loft above the attic during the rest of the year - the sides come apart so that it fits through the trapdoor.)

(Note: The old blue carpet square is to protect our new carpet, fitted last month after the old old blue one got soaked by a leaking radiator valve. Maybe by next year we'll have got hold of a carpet square which goes better with the new carpet!)