Hows my little construction?

For the last few weeks the little free time I've had has been spent building a new trellis for our garden. Anytime I build something I can generally guarantee myself that it will never end up like I planned. This was no exception.

It started simple enough, I wanted a new trellis for the garden since I ended up burning what was left of the one I poorly lashed together with Bamboo and crappy string last fall. We also have a neighbor that has a lot of crap hanging out around the outside of his garage often so it would double as a small screen to that.

My first mistake was after I bought all the wood I realized I had too much so I thought, well heck, I'm going to make it bigger! After I had it all constructed I realized I was one piece short.

The trellis is comprised of 5ish inch squares (with the exception of that one row of rectangles, how did that happen!?). Each piece is notched to fit together like Lincoln logs (only poorly instead of nicely). Since I'm terrible at getting mathematics to work for me in the real world I avoided using them at all costs, and it shows. After a large amount of hammering, glue, and screws everything pretty much fit together. And this is a sturdy beast. I've now vowed to get a nice large straight edge ruler/square before my next project.

The best part was when I showed my hard work off my Dad he goes, "This is held together with nails!?"
I said, "Yeah! They are smaller and look nicer."
"Then, why do some parts have screws."
"Oh, well those were problem areas."

We pretty much then realized I didn't buy anything suitable for outdoor use. So if the stain/varnish doesn't flake I'll be happy, and all of the screws and nails will probably rust in a few more days of this humidity. But I maintained, this is for the garden, its supposed to look a little rough, hence my less than ideal craftsmanship.

I also learned I should have stained everything before I put it together, I probably would have saved at least 3 hours of staining time, and I might have actually put on the 3 coat minimum it looks like it needs. Whatever, its for the garden, it's supposed to look rough.

As you can tell, I'm very proud of this piece of work, it looks like if I had built it on time the beans would have actually grown up it this year. Instead we are going to have a sad bean crop since we lost so much to the bean-rabbit fence separating session. But it does make a nice looking wall hanging out in the middle of our yard.



Since I haven't mentioned this years garden contents yet I'll fill ya in: Tomatoes Sweet Corn, Green Peppers, Habaneros, Chilli Peppers, Pole Beans, Red Cabbage, Brussel Sprouts, Red Potatoes, Lettuce, Carrots, and Sweet Potatoes.