Salvage French Door Arbor

Doors, doors, doors!  What fun it is to rescue a lovely old door, or pair of doors, and give them new purpose.  I also love how an arbor frames a gate, drawing ones eye and inviting them to come and see what is on the other side.  So, why not an arbor made of old doors?!

Again, I am urging everyone to visit their local building salvage stores and see what fun projects you can come up with giving new life to something old.  I found a pair of 24 inch wide French Doors at my local Habitat For Humanity ReStore.  These beauty's were only $8 each.  So, add in another $4.50 for some 2 x 4's and you have a sturdy and attractive arbor for less than $25.  That is a big savings over the typical lattice arbors you see sold in big box stores.

Here are the lovely doors that I started with.

I then measured the thickness of the doors.  This would be the thickness of the notches I would cut into the 2 x 4's for the top.  I also measured the width of the 2 gate posts to determine how far apart the notches should be on the 2 x 4's.  Once I determined the total width of the top connector beams I miter cut the ends of the 2 x 4's at a 45 deg. angle for a little flair.  My apologies for not getting a picture of this next step, but I marked off the size I needed the notch to be ( the thickness of the doors) and made several straight cuts only half way deep, setting the 2 x 4 on it's side and using the miter saw.  After making several cuts close together I used a chisel and hammer to remove the remaining wood in the "notch zone".  This is how it looks when you are done.

If you are going to paint your top connector beams I suggest you paint them before assembly as I did.

I laid the doors on their sides and attached the top beams with screws to the top of the door. Please ignore the expert photo with finger in the way, you get the idea ;-)

Then set the arbor up in place.  Due to the weight of the doors, I suggest that you get some fencing brackets and anchor the arbor to the gate posts for extra stability. 

So inexpensive and so easy!  Now I need to plant my climbing roses and wait.  In the meantime I will just have to imagine it covered in beautiful orange and red roses.

Thank you for stopping by, now get on out there and rescue an old door and have some fun with it!

Tiered Herb Garden

Happy Earth Day!

Today was a beautiful sunny day in the Pacific Northwest and in honor of Earth Day I felt it was justified to keep work work to a minimum today and get outside for some fun work.  What better day than Earth Day to build the tiered herb garden I had floating around in my brain.  I have had a pile of perfectly good salvage  timber from the kids old play structure beckoning.

Step 1.  Build 3 boxes in graduating sizes.  If you're lucky like me and you have lots of "helpers", careful turning your back as you might find that they have decided to squat in and accessorize your boxes.

Step 2.  Evict the squatters.

Step 3.  You want to use some 4x4 cut to the same height as the large box to help perch the middle box, I cut 3 4x4 pieces.

Step 4.  Add a wood bottom to the middle box.  I did this because I don't want to fill all of the voids with dirt.

Step 5.  Stack and secure the middle box positioned however you want.  I opted to line up all sides in one corner.  Sorry I didn't get a picture of this process, but you can see the final picture for the way I stacked the boxes.  I also secured the flat back sides with some metal straps attached to the bottom and middle boxes for extra stability.

Step 6.  Secure some gardening plastic or whatever else you want to use ( I used a scrap piece of weed barrier) to the bottom edge of the middle box and wrap around support 4x4 to create a void under the middle box.  I then filled the bottom of box with our home grown compost and then organic garden mix soil.

Step 7.  Stack 3rd and smallest box using the same method as the middle box using 1 scrap board on end to support the corner in the middle of the planter while resting the other edges on the middle box below.  I did not add a bottom to the top box.

Step 8.  Add compost and soil to the middle and top boxes.

Step 9.  Plant your beautiful herbs.  I dedicated the entire top box to Rosemary because you can never have enough Rosemary.  I dedicated the bottom box to my Italian herbs, 2 types of Basil, Italian Parsley and some Oregano.  The middle tier is my variety pack with Peppermint, Chives, Parsley, Cilantro and Thyme.

Step 10.  Water and enjoy the beauty!

Make every day Earth Day! Re-purpose, Re-cycle, Re-use.