After my employer decided to sell the property in August or whenever, they asked me to pull down the fence along the roadside. It was actually a pretty easy job, besides the manual aspect of moving all that timber, because a lot of it had already fallen over and the rest of the posts could be snapped off with a push. While I was stacking up the posts and rails, people came by and asked if they could have it. I agreed, given that the- anyway, who cares? Thing is, I decided to keep a few bits of timber for myself.
They sat in the garage for a few months because I didn’t think I had the hardware to make use of them, and when I cleaned out the corner of the garage I moved them down to the back porch. Well then I decided to clean up the back porch and was looking at all this timber and wondering whether I should just pitch it into the trailer and chuck it.
I decided not to. I tied the posts together, tied them to a saw bench and cut off all the rotten timber with the chainsaw. That got the posts ready. The rails I cut to size using Chris’ compound saw, getting rid of the nails. Regardless of the age, most of the timber was in pretty good condition, being 25.4mm jarrah planks. I managed to get 7 lengths of 1700mm, plus extras that I used as cross members at the ends.
I made up the ends first, using coach screws. I would have preferred to bolt the timber together but the jarrah is pretty strong. Anyway If I notice any problems with the screws I might be able to retrofit some 150mm bolts. Once the ends were screwed together I took everything out to the back porch to assemble in situ. I sat the planks in place and then began screwing them into place with oh I forget, some kind of deck screw or something that I had a pile of lying about. I didn’t quite have enough so I ended up using timber tek screws for a few of the planks on the bottom shelf.
Even after screwing everything down tight, the bench wobbled from side to side. I needed to brace it. After hypothesising a few solutions I noticed a large garden sleeper that I had standing up against the shed. Retrieving it I discovered that it was precisely the right length, so I tipped the bench over and screwed it to the back, along the top, with long deck screws. That did the job, though how robust that will remain over time is yet to be determined. Time will tell.
The next task was to tip the bench back onto its feet. This was actually pretty difficult and required me to sit inside on the middle shelf and lift it back up, using my weight as a counterbalance, a dangerous move if I had dropped it. Well, I didn’t drop it and got it upright then dragged it into place. Now I have all my pot plants arranged on it and everything is tidy, so yay.