Planters

I wanted to do a lot of container gardening in my backyard so we decided to build a whole bunch of planters  to grow the veggies in. We got a lot of reclaimed wood from my husbands workplace to make them out of. Mostly crates and a few pallets. Crates are much easier to work with and take apart than pallets are.

It was a lot of work to disassemble them all.

We decided to invest in a planer since we plan on using a lot of reclaimed wood for many projects around the house.

It just gets the wood all to the same thickness and a nice smooth surface to start a project with.

Once the wood was planed it was all cut to size for the vertical planks for the planters.

Then they were all stained.

They were then all lined up and screwed to a frame from the inside so all the screws wouldn't be visible from the outside

We made the mistake with the first planter of not really thinking about how we were going to join all the sides together. On the other planters we inset the frame 3/4 inch so the panels would join up overlapping the frame so you couldn't see it. The first planter we made the length from the stairs to the outer edge of the deck. Its huge.

We just used full length boards for the back sides of the planters since no one would ever see it. Much easier and faster than all the short planks.

Here's the first planter completed and filled with dirt. We have the slight problem than our whole backyard is on a slight incline. We didn't account for that with the first planter so there was a lot of digging down into the dirt to level it out.

On the second planter that went up against the garage we took that into account and made the back panel shorter than the front panel and put a slant on the bottom of the side panels.

So far we've got four built and one left to go off the left end of the deck. Grass is coming today so it'll finally start looking nearly complete.

For this project the wood was all free. The only cost was the screws and the stain.

Deck Addition

We decided to add a small addition onto the deck for the BBQ to sit on. We made it 4 feet by 2 1/2 feet. We put the frame together before attaching it to the deck.

We put down pavers to support the leg posts.

Once we attached it to the deck we measured the legs and cut them to size.

Once the legs were attached we cut the planks to size and screwed them down.

It was a quick and easy project, it only took a couple of hours to complete. Now the BBQ isn't blocking the path out the back door.

Workbench From Reclaimed Wood

Part of the plans for building a garage was to put in a work bench. We built it the length of the back wall of the garage. There were a few things we wanted to incorporate into it. We wanted it high enough for the tool box and the air compressor to fit underneath. We also wanted a few cubby's /drawers to store things in, as well as a shelf underneath for additional storage.

We built the bench using reclaimed lumber that we salvaged from crates and pallets. We started with the frame for the top of the bench. We put five 2x4 pieces coming out from the back of the top to create drawers under the top of the bench. We made the mistake of not calculating where our seam for the plywood that would be the top of bench would go. So after it was all together we had to pull out the middle drawer 2x4 and move it to support the seam.

We put bracing in each corner to help square the bench up.

Then we put the base of the cubby holes on.

Next we put bracing the length of the wall to support the back of the bench. We left the middle bracing off till then bench was up because it needed to be lower to due the plywood on the bottom of the cubby holes.

Next the legs were attached and the bench flipped over and attached to the wall.

We put a bracing on the front under the cubby holes to support them.

Then the counter top was put on using plywood.

The bench was made completely from reclaimed wood so it didn't cost a thing. We did buy the peg boards and hooks for it.

Reclaimed wood

We spent most of Sunday afternoon removing all the nails and bazillion staples from our reclaimed wood to get it ready for building with. This is now my new favourite tool, the Mechanical Nail Puller.

A definite must when working with reclaimed wood, it made removing nails a cinch.

Reclaimed Wood

  We spent the morning collecting wood for a few upcoming projects. My husbands work has a few crates and pallets that they were finished with so we disassembled them with some effort and brought them home.

I've been wanting to put a bunch of raised planters in the yard when we get our deck in and they had one really long crate that was perfect for planters so that saves having to build those. The rest of the wood is going towards a work bench in the garage and a couple decorating projects for the house, can't wait to get started on them. Hooray for free lumber.