Spring!

So, it's been a long time since the last post. We've been busy painting, arranging furniture, and what-not. We'll update with pictures of this later, but first I'd like to show you what we've been up to most recently. You see, after many months of being cooped up in the house and getting burned out on inside projects, it is finally time to work outside.

We decided in March/April that we wanted to make raised beds based on an article that Becky read online. Three beds sounded like the perfect number for what we wanted to plant, which will mostly be vegetables. So, here's what we did one sunny spring afternoon:

After priming and two coats of paint, the boards are almost ready to go. Some of the get cut in half to make the 4' side of our beds. Then the ends get painted. It's important to paint everything well in order to prevent much moisture from entering the wood. Once everything is painted, I use metal straps and screws to join all of the 8' boards into pairs. This gives the beds a little reinforcement and will keep gaps from forming between the boards.

If you'll note the brace I'm using, you may be thinking I'm Amish or a Luddite or something. Nope, I'm just thrifty (read: cheap). I got the brace a few weekends ago at an estate sale for under $1.

 
I'm using metal corner braces to hold the sides together. They're on the inside because I don't want to look at them. They're kind of ugly and they'll work just as well if they're placed on the inside. I'm using an old "eggbeater" style drill to put the screws in.

One down, two to go.

All done! They've been roughly spaced out where they'll go permanently. We plan on planting creeping thyme between the beds and along the fence so we don't have to mow it regularly.

A note: We're using regular douglas fir 2"x6"x8' boards for the beds. It's usually suggested that you use green treated or cedar for outdoor projects, but we're throwing caution to the wind here. Green treated lumber is full of chemicals that I don't want to ingest as they leach into the soil and cedar is expensive. We're building three beds out of regular 2x6's for what it would cost to build one bed out of cedar 2x6's. Also, we're lining our beds with plastic tile underlayment and painting them with outdoor paint. All of this we've salvaged for free. The rest of this has cost us about $142.

Next up: Dirt