Garden Box Construction, Part 5

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Though I was up early (left the house at 8AM to pick up some potting soil ingredients at Home Depot), we began work a little late. It wasn’t until around noon that we headed into the basement to pick up where we left off on Tuesday.

I broke the new set of gloves I got, and noticed a “security device” attached to them. Wondering if there was actually anything inside (or if it was just a scare tactic), I broke it open with a hammer.

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And guess what? It actually had something inside. I was figuring it to be empty.

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With our sides all done, the next step involved us affixing some horizontal braces. This is the “raised” part of the garden box, and would leave about 16.5″ inches for the decking boards, tubes, and soil.

From the bottom to the top of the 2×2’s and 2×4’s ended up being about 4 1/4″.

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Me, affixing one of the 2×2’s to the smaller side. Liz took my camera and said we needed more proof on the blog that I was actually doing some of the work.

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For the larger sides, we didn’t do anything beyond just marking where the 2×4’s needed to go.

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Once we were ready to take things outside, we were greeted with… a small snow shower. This would be a recurring thing on a very unusual day, weather-wise.

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During a lull, we moved out all the sides and began assembly.

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We weren’t sure how to start off. This was a test to see if we could set the box on its side and join the two sides in this manner.

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Ultimately, we ended up aligning the boards flat on the ground, and put in the screws from the side.

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Stop. Hammertime!

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Oh wait, another snow storm.

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Oh wait, it’s sunny again.

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Like nothing ever happened.

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We set up our second box a little more strategically. While we tried joining all the sides together at the start… we ended up having more luck joining two sides first, screwing them into place, and then affixing the remaining sides.

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In a few instances, it worked out best to have Liz hold up the box while I went in and tackled some of the screws (closest to the ground).

The box is actually quite heavy, but she made Atlas proud.

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The garden box, with the side assembled.

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On a lark, Liz brought out one of the decking boards to see if it fit. I’ll be honest – this was a little scary. But it seemed to slide into place with no problem.

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While we set the second garden box roughly where it was going to go, the first box was really just plopped in the yard haphazardly. I wanted to try to move it closer to its final location… and Liz suggested we use some leftover PVC pipe to “roll” the box into place.

I was skeptical, thinking the weight of the box would be too much. But Liz was right and I was totally wrong. This is her, raising her arm in victory.

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This is after we rolled the first box into place. Notice how her chin is tilted, and her smug look? I get this all the time.

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Liz, taking a photo of the garden boxes and the results of our day’s work.

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Both boxes, set up and set in place. Up next: the decking boards, the pond liner, the tubes, and filling up each box with soil.

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This is what I picked up this morning at Home Depot. According to Liz, “this might be overkill, I’m not sure.”

I guess we’ll find out…

Related:
Garden Box Planning Mode
Garden Box Construction, Part 1
Garden Box Construction, Part 2
Garden Box Construction, Part 3
Garden Box Construction, Part 4

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