How to build a wooden trellis

After we moved into our house we discovered a young grape vine growing in the back yard. Well, it wasn't growing when we moved in, at that point it really just looked like a stick in the ground, but before long it sprouted leaves, and vines and even a solitary little bunch of grapes. We're still waiting to find out what type of grapes we have, and whether they're good for eating (or making wine?). In the meantime I thought I'd better do something to support the vines that were getting ganglier by the day, and starting to lean out onto the ground.

I checked out trellises at my local hardware and garden stores, and was shocked to find that even basic wooden ones cost at least $30. Forget what you'd pay for a fancy wrought-iron one! The one I made cost about $6 in materials, and took me less than an hour to make. I used five 8' 1x2s, a hand saw, a drill and a handful of 1.5" screws. If you have any scraps of 1x2 around, this is a great opportunity to use them up, since this project requires some shorter pieces, and it doesn't really matter how long they are. Here's my setup:

I started by laying an 8' 1x2 that would be the center piece on the ground, and attached a short (about 1') cross piece to it about 18" from the bottom using two screws. If you want to be sure that the wood won't split, you can pre-drill the holes, but I just went ahead with the screws themselves and backed up and drilled if the wood looked like it was starting to split.

I then attached two more 8' 1x2s, one to each end of the cross piece, using only one screw each so that I would be able to adjust the angle between each of them and the cross piece. This is how you control how much wider your trellis is at the top than it is at the bottom. I just sort of looked at it and adjusted it until it seemed right.

I used a scrap piece of 12 that I had lying around for the next cross piece, attaching it where the vertical pieces were the same distance apart as it was long. I then cut one of the other 8' 1x2s into two pieces, one smaller and one bigger, and attached them lower down and higher up on the trellis, respectively. I attached each one to the center piece and each of the other vertical pieces with two screws. 

At that point I decided that the trellis had enough bars and vertical pieces for my purposes, but you could certainly add as many cross pieces as you want. If your outside vertical pieces were farther apart, or you wanted to build a very tall trellis (or a short wide one), you could add more vertical pieces. I would recommend attaching them to the second or third cross piece, so that more structure is added to the trellis as it gets wider. 

Here's how the trellis looks now that the grape vines have grown a bit more, and are used to being supported by it.

Grapes are, of course, far from the only type of plant that a trellis like this could be used for. It would be great for roses too, and you could use different sizes and widths of trellises for raspberries, cucumbers, pole beans or any kind of climbing vine. 

You could also paint or decorate this trellis in any number of ways (red, anyone?) to add a splash of extra colour and interest to your yard or garden. Do you have a home made or decorated trellis? I'd love to see what you've done, and hear your ideas for how I should jazz mine up a bit!

Creating a Gravel Parking Pad

When we decided that we wanted to have a nice gravel parking pad, instead of a dirty, uneven, weed covered parking area off of our back lane, I had a number of questions, like where does a person buy gravel anyways? Not to mention how much do we need, what does it cost, and how do we get it home?

One reason we chose to put in a gravel parking pad, rather than paving, is that using a permeable surface for parking is more eco-friendly, since it reduces run-off. In case you're considering this relatively cheap but high-impact project, I will share some of my new-found insights here, along with some photos of our project. This is a before picture from when we were building the fence. (There were a lot less weeds then.)

We decided to put landscaping fabric down underneath the gravel to crush the existing weeds, and prevent more weeds from growing up through it. If you do this (particularly on a windy day), be sure to have lots of rocks, or better yet (as we discovered) some 2x4's on hand to weigh down the fabric until the gravel arrives.

When I was trying to figure out what type of stores I should be calling to compare prices on gravel, it seemed to me that in the old days, one would have just looked up "gravel" in the yellow pages. So, I tried it (on yellowpages.com, that is). This didn't turn up many places that looked promising to me, but it did set me on the path of the "building supply" store. That, my friends, is where you buy gravel.

Google maps led me to a number of building supply stores close to home (which, I reasoned, would make delivery cheaper). Now I know there are some hard core DIY'ers out there thinking to yourselves "Delivery, bah! I'll just pick up the gravel myself, shovel it into the back of my hatchback, and drive it home in a few small loads." (Okay, I'll admit it, I considered this.) Don't do it. Gravel is heavy. Really heavy. And the amount you will need is more than you think (I'll get to that in a minute). So if you can't avoid the delivery fee, how else can you save money on gravel?

James and the dump truck.

The best way to save money on gravel is to call around and ask about the cost of gravel (usually given per cubic yard), and also about the cost of delivery. I called five building supply stores. The cost of the gravel ranged from $37 to $50 per cubic yard, and the cost of delivery was between $25 and $70. So you can see that it is well worth taking the time to shop around. Fortunately for us, the place with the cheapest gravel also had the cheapest delivery, so calling around really did save us a bundle.

So, how many cubic yards do you need? I asked a number of people, both family friends with experience in this area, and the people at the building supply stores. The conclusion that I have come to is that, as a general rule, 1 cubic yard per 100 square feet that you want to cover is about right. If the ground that you are putting the gravel on is not very compacted, or if there is room for the gravel to spread at the edges (which there wasn't in our case), you might need a bit more. We got 4 cubic yards, and it was a big pile! Here it is:

Our other big tip for you, given our experience raking and shoveling the gravel to convert it from a giant pile of rocks into a nice, even parking area, is to have the dump truck dump it in the middle (rather than at the edge) of the area that you plan to cover with gravel. That way you can spread it out from the middle in all 4 directions, instead of having to spread it a farther distance in only 3 directions, like we did. Also, wear sunscreen and drink plenty of water.



And voila, a dazzling new parking area that's eco-friendly too!

How to Make Your Shower Seem Bigger!

If you've moved from a more recently built home to an older one, you may have noticed that the bath tub is usually a bit smaller in older homes. Since the shower curtain hangs at the edge of the bath tub, this can make the shower feel cramped too. So, although I'm not (yet?) up to replacing a bath tub, and not sure where I'd get the space to put a bigger one even if I were up to the task, I decided that it would be fun to try putting in one of those fancy curved shower curtains that they have at hotels, to make the shower feel a bit more spacious.

I picked up a curved curtain rod at my local hardware store for about $25 (which seemed a bit pricey to me, but I'm tired of feeling cramped in the shower). Here is a picture of our old, straight curtain rod.

Taking the old rod down was no trouble. I just unscrewed the screws that were holding the mounting brackets to the wall, and they came right off the pole. Here is one of them, next to a lovely glass of our home-bottled red wine that I was enjoying while I worked on this project.

 

As I worked on putting up the new rod, I discovered a few things. First, the order that you assemble the parts in is very important. The new pole came with both mounting brackets (black plastic) and fancy chrome covers for the mounting brackets. First, put the mounting bracket cover on the pole, chrome sides facing away from the wall. Then, put the black plastic mounting bracket on the pole.

Once these two pieces are already on the rod, you can take the pin that comes with the kit, and put it through the hole at the end of the rod. (Can you tell that I didn't do these things in the right order the first time around?) The pin will fit into a slot on the wall side of the mounting bracket, and this is what prevents the pole from spinning, and keeps it curving out away from the shower stall.

Here is the pin, in place through the holes in the end of the rod.

Once you have all these pieces in place, you can attach the rod to the wall. My old rod was screwed through the tile grout, and anchored with those little plastic wall anchors. Since the screw holes for the new rod were closer together than for the old one (why are they never the same distance apart?!?), I decided to re-use the bottom anchor, and make a new hole for the top screw. Since the rod seemed fairly stable after putting in the bottom screws on both ends, and I don't plan on hanging anything heavy from the shower curtain rod, I decided not to bother with plastic anchors for the top screw.

And voila, here is our fancy new curtain rod, and very spacious shower!

I'm still working on finding a creative new use for the old pole and mounting brackets, so let me know if you have any brilliant suggestions!