A tire costs nothing, weighs enough to stay where you put it, and will outlast every wooden planter you ever buy, which is why old tire projects keep turning up in the best looking backyards. The four tires stacked behind the garage are the cheapest outdoor furniture available. Cut one in half and it hangs on a fence as a flower planter. Wrap one in sisal rope and it becomes a coffee table nobody guesses started as a tire. Fill one with sand and screw a lid on top and it is a sandbox. Paint one and drop a galvanized bucket inside and the dog finally stops tipping his water over. Here are the ideas worth the afternoon, and every one of them links back to the person who worked it out.
1. DIY Hanging Tire Planter
A whole tire painted a bright teal, hung flat against white siding and spilling red and pink petunias down the front. DIY Show Off scrubs the tire with soap and water and dries it before two coats of spray paint that is paint and primer in one. Six drainage holes go in the bottom with a half inch bit, which takes a sharp bit, real pressure and puts out a little smoke. A commenter who tried a one inch bit hit the steel belts, so stay at a half inch. Weed barrier fabric lines the holes and packing peanuts fill the base.
Get the full tutorial at DIY Show Off.
2. DIY Tire Table
A twenty four inch tire wrapped shoulder to shoulder in sisal and manila rope, sitting on wooden legs dipped in citrus yellow. The number that stops people is the rope: three hundred and fifty feet of quarter inch, bought in fifty foot hanks. The other useful fact is the adhesive, because hot glue does not stick to tires at all. Construction adhesive holds the rope to the rubber and hot glue only starts working once the wrap reaches the plywood top. Scrub the tire with dish soap first, and hold the rim rope with painters tape while it dries.
Get the full tutorial at Sarah of While They Snooze, featured on East Coast Creative.
3. Easy DIY Tire Sandbox
A twenty two inch tire filled with sand, with a round treated plywood lid leaning against it and a chalkboard behind. Creating Really Awesome Fun Things cuts the lid to the tire diameter using a compass, or a thumbtack, string and pencil, then sands the edges smooth and screws it together. An old door knob becomes the handle after the prongs come off with a Dremel. The lid is not decoration. It is what keeps the neighborhood cats from turning the sandbox into a litter box, which is the single thing that kills most backyard sandboxes.
Get the full tutorial at Creating Really Awesome Fun Things.
4. Outdoor Deck Tire Table
Three lime green tires stacked under a round glass top, sitting in front of a bench of rainbow zebra cushions on a wooden deck. Mad Cap Frenzy used about three and a half cans of Rustoleum Outdoor spray paint for the three tires and a leftover glass round from an old coffee table. The glass is not fixed down at all. Rubber grips it well enough that it does not shift, which is the appeal of the whole build. Clean the debris off and let the tires dry fully before painting, and a clear outdoor sealer helps if the table lives in full sun.
Get the full tutorial at Mad Cap Frenzy.
5. DIY Tire Dog Bed
A black tire turned into a dog bed, with one side cut away into a low entrance and a pink polka dot cushion filling the inside. The trim is the charm here: pale paw prints stencilled on the tread, a strip of ribbon and lace around the middle and a bow at the opening. A tire makes a genuinely good dog bed because it is heavy enough that an enthusiastic dog cannot drag it around, the walls give a nervous dog something to lean against, and the rubber wipes clean in a way a fabric bed never does.
Get the full tutorial at Portal do Dog.
6. Tire Flower Pot
A van tire turned inside out and painted deep burgundy, with a scalloped cream edge and a ring of tiny painted flowers around the belly. Aprendiz uses marine urethane enamel, the kind sold for boats, though plain exterior enamel will do the job. Two details are worth stealing. Turn the tire upside down before painting the border line, because you get a cleaner edge with far less effort. And make the dotted flowers with the eraser end of a pencil dipped in paint, which gives perfectly even circles without a stencil.
Get the full tutorial at Aprendiz.
7. Repurpose Old Tires As Chicken Baths
Two tires painted turquoise and green, filled with dry dirt and set inside a run, with a hen settled in one and a little wooden sign reading chicken baths. This is not decoration. Chickens dust bathe to keep mites and lice off themselves, and without a proper spot they dig their own craters in the coop floor. Weed Em and Reap fills each tire with dirt or sand plus about a quart of diatomaceous earth. One can of outdoor spray paint does a tire, dries in about an hour, and a sheet of cardboard underneath catches the overspray.
Get the full tutorial at Weed Em and Reap.
8. DIY Car Tire Seating
Two tires dressed in bright outdoor fabric, one navy with a lighthouse print and one cream with yellow chevron, banked against cushions on a wooden floor. Stack a pair of tires, cover them in outdoor fabric, and you have a stool. Build the top as a lift off lid and the hollow inside becomes storage for exactly the sort of clutter a playroom generates. Outdoor fabric is the specified choice for a reason, since it shrugs off sun and damp in a way upholstery cotton will not. They also make very good pet beds.
Get the full tutorial at DIY Joy.
9. DIY Tire Coffee Table
A tire wrapped in pale sisal rope with three short wooden feet, standing on an outdoor rug with a pink tray of strawberries on top. Persia Lou uses about two hundred and fifty feet of three eighths inch sisal, a half inch plywood circle top and bottom, and construction adhesive. Two pieces of advice from her are worth taking. Start the wrap in the dead centre of the tabletop and spiral outward rather than beginning at an edge, and rope a tire with a friend, because holding, gluing and coiling is more than two hands can manage.
Get the full tutorial at Persia Lou.
10. Colorful Tire Garden
Nine tires painted purple, turquoise, orange, yellow, green and pink, stacked against a fence into a tiered bed with a thermometer set into one of them. Lemon Bean and Things used Valspar gloss paint and primer in one, two coats per tire, with no separate primer step. The clever fix is underneath: wooden pallet slats stapled to plastic feed bags, inverted inside each upper tire to hold the soil up. The whole bed came to seventy eight dollars including plants. Be warned that pink and orange faded noticeably in one Texas summer.
Get the full tutorial at Lemon Bean and Things.
11. Spill Proof Dog Bowl Recycled Tire DIY
A small tire painted royal blue with white paw prints, holding a galvanized bucket of water with a white dog drinking out of it. Rural Mom matched a seventeen inch tire with a seven gallon galvanized bucket measuring seventeen and five eighths inches so it wedges in snugly. Measure the inside diameter of your tire before buying the bucket, because that fit is the whole design. She uses livestock safe exterior paint from the farm supply store, which matters when an animal will be nosing at it daily. Small tire for a small dog, big tire for a big one.
Get the full tutorial at Rural Mom.
12. DIY Tire Wishing Well
Three tires stacked and painted purple with white mortar lines so they read as brickwork, topped with a scalloped purple roof on two white posts and planted with flowers. Fab Art DIY paints with exterior quality spray paint, laying a base colour first and then adding the white lines on top for the brick illusion. The roof supports slot through square holes cut vertically through the stack, so line the holes up before gluing the tires together with landscaping adhesive. If cutting rubber is a step too far, screw the supports to the outside instead.
Get the full tutorial at Fab Art DIY.
13. Modern Twist On Used Tires
Three tires cut into a cradle shape, painted in glossy red, green and turquoise, hung on wire against weathered white boards with an air plant sitting in the red one. This is the version to make if the words tire planter make you wince. Cutting away part of one sidewall and turning the rest back on itself gives a sculptural loop with no tread showing at all, and a coat of high gloss paint kills the last of the rubber look. Hang them at staggered heights on a fence and they read as ceramic.
Get the full tutorial at Visto en la Web.
14. DIY Hanging Tire Flower Planter
A weathered grey tire on the left and the same tire on the right, cut clean in half, painted glossy yellow, hung from two chains and packed with trailing magenta flowers. The DIY JOY tutorial cuts the tire in half first, paints each half and lets it dry completely before anything else happens. Holes go through the ends front and back, plus a few in the bottom for drainage. A bolt slides through each chain end and out through the hole, with a nut tightened down on the inside. Two half tires from one tire means two planters, hung on a porch wall or a tree.
Get the full tutorial at DIY Joy.
