Deck End Tables Upgrade because we have Chipmunks…

Back in 2017 I tackled building a whole bunch of furniture for our deck including three deck end tables with a built in cooler in the center of each of them. It was such a fun and cool idea! I ended up using the “coolers” as planters over the years and loved planting annual flowers and herbs ever since… Or at least I TRIED to keep lovely blooming flowers and herbs in these planters every year… the end result however was just me being totally annoyed to the point of my deciding to just GIVE UP!

Because we have chipmunks…

ALOT. OF. CHIPMUNKS.

And Chipmunks do one thing all spring, summer and fall: They bury food. Last year I was so excited to plant a whole array of herbs up here on the deck in our little built in planters…

And I was lucky to get five basil leaves because those damned chipmunks dug up everything to bury sunflower seeds instead!

And summer after summer of my flowers being destroyed, not getting the herbs I was so looking forward to, really was the last straw lol. It went on my list to just give up on the idea and replace the center inserts of all three of our deck end tables with flat boards.

You can see hilariously in the before pictures that I didn’t plant anything in those planters this year but clearly the chipmunks did as they are ALL growing sunflowers.

Honestly the sunflowers wouldn’t have been so bad if they would just leave them alone!

But chipmunks can’t comprehend that if you bury a sunflower seed… its going to sprout. So they come back, over and over again, digging frantically making a total mess trying to find the seeds that they stashed… that are obviously no longer seeds…

Besides all of that though there was the fact too that the end tables didn’t actually leave a whole lot of space to set a drink anyway.

One weekend I was thrilled to realize I literally had one eight foot deck board left – exactly what I needed to fix all three deck end tables!

So, this project cost us nothing except in materials we already had.

I took the planters out, removed the short support boards and simply filled the gap with a new board for each table.

It didn’t take long and certainly will remove my crabbiness at our chipmunks finally. I will miss the opportunity to ever have any flowers out there but such is life!

Eventually the new boards will match the color of the older wood (its green treated pine).

After giving the deck end tables a good bath I was quite pleased – problem solved!