Raising the Beds

August 2012

Since Josh had created a nice pretty foundation for his beds and is the builder in the family.  I was left to my own devices.  You really don't need two people in a wood project.  My main purpose was occasionally to help carry a long board, or hold something in place.  I occupied my time doing some pruning (aka attacking the jungle that is our backyard).  I also cleaned the garage (shocker) and generally kept house life moving forward.

 

We wanted to match the raised beds we had done two years ago, so Josh notched each board so that they dove tailed together.  It was a slow process.  The porch cover was mostly square, the concrete patio beneath it was completely un-square and our rough sawn lumber was a little 'organic'.  By the end of Saturday we only had one layer of 2x12s. The next day Josh finished the second layer of 2x12's and added a 2x6 ring around the top to bring the beds up to 32". We still had to add our cap which was made up of a 2x4 and a 2x6  so our total height would become 36". This was deemed the appropriate height for me to be able to reach the back of the beds and not be so low it was a potential knee basher.

This time Josh used screws to the hold the beds together.  On the front, we had used nails, but over time the weight of the dirt and the swelling of the wood had led certain pieces to shift and gaps to appear.  We hoped screws would stand the test of time since their threaded ends would bury into the wood. To attach each ring to each other we used simple stainless flat brackets and screwed them together. We did this about every 2-3 feet to stop shifting.

Once the walls were up and before we put the cap on my job came in. We decided to wrap the interior of the wood beds with plastic.  I am sure it would take MANY years for the raised beds to rot through solid 2" cedar but we felt better making sure our wet Portland dirt wasn't sitting directly up against it.  I lined the sides and simply stapled the tops to hold it in place.  The cap will cover these staples so I was not worried about making it look pretty. Once that was done we started placing our huge pile of concrete in the bottom.

 

There was multiple reasons for this.  1. We had to get rid of all the concrete and we're too cheap to get another dump bin 2. This would actually provide some drainage for the beds so that they didn't stay too wet 3. This would prevent groundhogs/moles from getting up into the beds 4. Zombie land protection. Seriously, it was insane, we took all the biggest pieces and the smallest pieces and piled them in and pretty much were creating a castle wall. This porch could withstand a siege. While we were putting the pieces in I talked to Josh about something I think about often.

"Remember how when we do projects and we open something up and go 'WHO WOULD DO THIS?' because someones earlier laziness/cheapness/lack of knowledge is now making our life so much harder? Yup, we are doing that right now." Some poor soul will at some point need to remove these beds, either because they don't like them or they have started to rot.  They will believe it is a simple wood bed filled with innocent movable soil.  Instead they will encounter 3 tons of concrete chunks at the bottoms and curse us.  I wonder if I will feel it when it happens?  Will I be 45 standing in my kitchen and feel the hair on my neck stand up- that will be someone discovering our little secret.

In the meantime, we got rid of 90% of our concrete and then started on the dirt pile next to it. The year of piles was slowly coming to end! Yay!

Back Porch Love

July 2012

Wrapping up the front porch project just got me more excited to start moving on our back porch.  For a bit of a background when we bought the house there was a covered back porch off the mudroom.  It looked like this.

The entire thing was structurally unsound and I cringed every time the wind blew.  That being said, we used it all the time.  It was a great place to eat in the summer and to have friends over and sit out back. Our house can start to feel pretty small when you have 6 or more people in it. So the back porch became a great additional hang out space.

When we remodeled the outside of the house there was no option, it had to go.  It came down in one short afternoon and it was a huge difference.  The backyard looked so big and open.  Unfortunately, we missed it immediately.  The back of our house faces West and during the summer it was super hot out there.  You could literally cook yourself on that patio waiting for the BBQ. We knew we wanted to put something back but decided to wait it out and take on the project in 2012.  

As part of the Depave project we decided to remove some additional concrete from around our patio.  The patio was pretty large and connected to our driveway which made it feel like we were eating out on our driveway.  We had no green space.  Josh and I envisioned a similar but smaller back porch, that we wanted to screen in.  We decided to surround the porch with raised beds to act as enclosure and to give us some prime planting areas in the back of the house.  There were napkin sketches at beer gardens and several conversations before we came up with this configuration.

Since this would call for some big lumber and the summer already seemed to be rushing past us, Josh and I decided to outsource the actual canopy portion.  We were willing to build the raised beds and screen the porch in, but we would leave the heavy lifting to a crew of guys.  We called back our contractor who did the exterior work on the outside the year before.  Three days later we had a new back porch!  Can you believe it?  I came home and it felt SO right to have that space back there. 

We chose to use cedar for the columns and beams, we saved some money and used standard structural grade pine for the rafters. We used economical corrugated galvanized sheets for the roofing.  To this point we have been pretty true to the character of our house.  We have been using a combination of restoration and thoughtful replacement to try to keep the old gal moving.  We did not do this with the porch, we felt this was a 'new' space that was part of the yard.  We were willing to go a little more modern and industrial. Also I love the sound of the rain on the metal roof.

Raising A Garden... Weekend 2

March 2011

Josh and I had started all of our seeds indoors and they were GROWING, we woke up early on Saturday so we could get moving.   The goal for the weekend was to complete the boxes and fill them with compost/soil.  Considering all we did the first weekend was move dirt from one area to another we knew this was easier said then done.

 

Josh got back to work on his patio workshop and I started leveling the area for our long beds.  We had managed to have a few early hours without rain and moved quickly.  To make the beds more interesting we ran a 2"x4" banding strip 24" up.  This has no purpose other then decorative but I think it was worth it. These are just for growing plants but they are also in our front yard.  Since we never take pictures of actual people you will have to use Gus as a scale object.  The beds are about 40" tall at the side walk and up by the house are only 14" tall.  This allowed us to negotiate the hillside and provide different heights for all of our different plants.  We created a stacked cap using a 2"x4" and a 2"x6".  We did this for two reasons, one purely decorative again, and two, for a place to rest tools when working.

By Saturday, we had finished the right side of the boxes.  On Sunday, Josh got to work on the left side while I went to the garden store for 15 bags of top soil and compost.  As you can see by the last picture we didn't finish until very late on Sunday. The caps were actually pretty hard, Josh mitred the corners together.  This would have been easier if we weren't using a hand held circular saw. Tools... you never seem to have the perfect one... 

In the end, we felt pretty good about our progress.  In total we had made 2- 3'x3' beds, 2- 3' x 8' beds and 1- 3' x 6' bed.  In all we created  84 sq ft of raised planting area... not to shabby.  We hoped the following weekend would be a little easier.  We still needed to install some sort of steps, pathway, and landscaping. 
 

Raising a Garden Day 1

April 2010

We took another month off in house land, our near death event of the almost falling chandelier made us decide to hold off.  We also were trying to save some much needed money for our exterior remodel which we wanted to take on in the spring.  So, I took the time to lust over some seed catalogs and make big plans to have a large organic garden come summer. 

Since our backyard doesn't get much sunlight the most logical place to put our garden was in our front yard.  While this may seem to weird to people not from Portlandia, this is actually pretty common in our town.  In order to make it appear more pleasing we decided to building some raised beds.  This would help for multiple reasons.  First, we have a small hill on the corner of our yard that already needed a retaining wall.  Second, prior to moving in our sewer line was replaced and they had destroyed all the grass and plantings in this area.  Last, I am lazy and do not like to bend.

Josh went about creating some plans for the beds, when you're an underemployed architect it's amazing the time and energy your willing to commit to plans and elevations of small household projects.  But, it was good for us to brush off the dust on our autocad and make it happen.  After we both felt they looked good and provided enough space for our garden, we went ahead and ordered the wood from a friend.  These were beautiful pieces of cedar, since it was rough cut they were true dimensions and weighed about 100 lbs each.  He delivered them on a rainy day and filled our garage to the brim.

Now all we needed was a few days of no rain to get start....