Woodworking (of sorts) - Pool yard
When we moved into this place, we knew the retaining wall around the pool needed some love. The sleepers were leaning outwards, the fence on top was leaning even further, it was all a bit shabby.
K posted about the first stage of the reconstruction - rebuilding the retaining wall - way back in mid-November. A month or so after that AH, MH and I put the rest of the wall in place:
The finished retaining wall.
The new wall is 1-2m further out than the old one, giving us a lot more room for gardening and a much softer line for such an imposing wall. The old one was a basic rectangle, the new one curves around the far end and chews up a lot of the unused/unusable space in the back yard. Legally we're supposed to have a 1.2m fence around the pool to keep errant kids from dunking themselves - this wall was 0.8m at its highest, so we needed some more...
Some time in January I intercepted a message on the woodwork forum from a guy who'd just demolished a house in Cannington and had roof beams and floorboards for free. I yoinked a few floorboards, got home and realised I could use roof beams for the fence rails. Back to Cannington again for a trailerload of 100x50mm jarrah beams. For free. Win!
Split the beams in half on my small but trusty table saw and bolted each pair to the uprights:
The first pair of rails. Fence at this point was 0.5m high, giving a total barrier height of 1.3m
Highly technical (and surprisingly accurate) rail spacing mechanism. I had two 100mm and two 150mm blocks that I used to space most of the rails - get the bottom one level, then space out the top one and it's all good.
Originally I'd planned to buy pickets for this fence, which would have ended up being treated pine ones from the Big Green Shed and cost a bucket. Then looked at the huge pile of pickets salvaged from our side fence and the neighbour's back fence - Des very kindly piled them up in our driveway when he had his fence replaced - and we used those instead. And so began the interminable job of sorting through them to find the good ones, denailing them, cutting to size, sanding the ends to reduce splinters and nailing them to the rails.
I decided that K should have easier access between the pool yard and the gardening shed in the NW corner of our block - the main pool gate is in the SE corner of the fence - and so a gate got planned as well. Of course to get up to the gate you need a ramp, and the fence has to be 1.2m above the ramp, not the ground, so the fence needs to be higher there. Part of the reason the wall got extended is to compensate for the fence blocking the winter sun over part of the yard, so putting a 1.2m fence on the NW corner wasn't going to fly. We ended up deciding on a gate in the SW corner, with a ramp going North from that. In with another sleeper to act as a gate post.
I got most of the way through it before we went to NZ, but ran out of time. Came back and hit it hard over the last two weekends to get it done. The last couple of sections done, gate hung this morning after some placement help from MH and a couple of trips to Bunnings to replace snapped screws...(mental note: 6mm coach screws are $#&*ing useless.)
And so it is done. 35 sleepers, 12 roof beams and 300 pickets later, we have a finished pool fence:
North end of the yard. The ground slopes up from left to right, hence the gradually increasing height of the fence as the wall got lower.
NW corner, hidden behind the natives (blissfully unaware of their fate...)
SW corner, including the new gate. Yes, that is a G-clamp holding the gate closed - I haven't installed the latch yet. :)
Western side of the yard from outside. The ramp will come down from the gate towards the left of shot.
We're both pretty chuffed with how it's turned out, but I'm buggered if that wasn't a much bigger job than I thought it would be. Total cost was ~$1400 all up, with about $1k of that being the sleepers and the rest was fittings, fastenings (screws etc) and a few new drill bits. :) If I'd had to buy the rails and pickets I reckon it would have gone well over $2500.
It's also kinda cool to build something this big entirely out of recycled timber.
K posted about the first stage of the reconstruction - rebuilding the retaining wall - way back in mid-November. A month or so after that AH, MH and I put the rest of the wall in place:
The finished retaining wall.
The new wall is 1-2m further out than the old one, giving us a lot more room for gardening and a much softer line for such an imposing wall. The old one was a basic rectangle, the new one curves around the far end and chews up a lot of the unused/unusable space in the back yard. Legally we're supposed to have a 1.2m fence around the pool to keep errant kids from dunking themselves - this wall was 0.8m at its highest, so we needed some more...
Some time in January I intercepted a message on the woodwork forum from a guy who'd just demolished a house in Cannington and had roof beams and floorboards for free. I yoinked a few floorboards, got home and realised I could use roof beams for the fence rails. Back to Cannington again for a trailerload of 100x50mm jarrah beams. For free. Win!
Split the beams in half on my small but trusty table saw and bolted each pair to the uprights:
The first pair of rails. Fence at this point was 0.5m high, giving a total barrier height of 1.3m
Highly technical (and surprisingly accurate) rail spacing mechanism. I had two 100mm and two 150mm blocks that I used to space most of the rails - get the bottom one level, then space out the top one and it's all good.
Originally I'd planned to buy pickets for this fence, which would have ended up being treated pine ones from the Big Green Shed and cost a bucket. Then looked at the huge pile of pickets salvaged from our side fence and the neighbour's back fence - Des very kindly piled them up in our driveway when he had his fence replaced - and we used those instead. And so began the interminable job of sorting through them to find the good ones, denailing them, cutting to size, sanding the ends to reduce splinters and nailing them to the rails.
I decided that K should have easier access between the pool yard and the gardening shed in the NW corner of our block - the main pool gate is in the SE corner of the fence - and so a gate got planned as well. Of course to get up to the gate you need a ramp, and the fence has to be 1.2m above the ramp, not the ground, so the fence needs to be higher there. Part of the reason the wall got extended is to compensate for the fence blocking the winter sun over part of the yard, so putting a 1.2m fence on the NW corner wasn't going to fly. We ended up deciding on a gate in the SW corner, with a ramp going North from that. In with another sleeper to act as a gate post.
I got most of the way through it before we went to NZ, but ran out of time. Came back and hit it hard over the last two weekends to get it done. The last couple of sections done, gate hung this morning after some placement help from MH and a couple of trips to Bunnings to replace snapped screws...(mental note: 6mm coach screws are $#&*ing useless.)
And so it is done. 35 sleepers, 12 roof beams and 300 pickets later, we have a finished pool fence:
North end of the yard. The ground slopes up from left to right, hence the gradually increasing height of the fence as the wall got lower.
NW corner, hidden behind the natives (blissfully unaware of their fate...)
SW corner, including the new gate. Yes, that is a G-clamp holding the gate closed - I haven't installed the latch yet. :)
Western side of the yard from outside. The ramp will come down from the gate towards the left of shot.
We're both pretty chuffed with how it's turned out, but I'm buggered if that wasn't a much bigger job than I thought it would be. Total cost was ~$1400 all up, with about $1k of that being the sleepers and the rest was fittings, fastenings (screws etc) and a few new drill bits. :) If I'd had to buy the rails and pickets I reckon it would have gone well over $2500.
It's also kinda cool to build something this big entirely out of recycled timber.