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The project:
Years ago I screened off an area at the back of the yard to use as a dump for left over landscaping materials. Over time, the treated pine lattice screen started disintegrating and the framing was rotting. The whole thing needed renovating, and it needed to look good.
- Materials:
I used H2 blue pine timber from the building materials department, screws, staples and wire from the hardware department, paint from the paint shop and Eden brushwood screening from the landscaping department at my local Bunnings. The brushwood screening came in 3m lengths, 1.8 m high, in individual packages.
- Tools:
I already owned the tools I used - the mitre saw, the wire cutter and pliers, and the manual staple gun.
- Step 1:
I demolished the rotten treated pine screen, leaving the galvanised stirrups I had used when originally building the old screen in the ground - they were still in good condition and strong enough to hold the walls up.
The original design had one wall extending from the side fence, with a diagonal prop to hold it reasonably firm. The other wall extended from the rear fence, and, to avoid having a gate that could be closed to hide the contents of the dump, I had built a short crank into the wall at an angle, which acted as a prop to stop the wall from waving about. The basic design was sound so I used it again.
- Step 2:
I painted the H2 Blue pine timber with the colour least likely to stand out in the back yard, Woodland Grey. The actual paint I used was left over from another project. I measured and cut the lengths of timber to make the wall frames to hold up the screen. As I cut each piece of timber I painted the cut ends to try to minimise rotting of the timber in the open air.
- Step 3:
On site, I assembled all the frame pieces, predrilling and screwing each joint. I made the studs the same the length as the Eden brushwood panels so that I could fasten them to the top and bottom plates without cutting any of the individual lengths of brushwood, which would not have been easy.
I needed to fasten the ends of each frame to the side and bottom fences, to both support the frames and improve the appearance of the structure.
- Step 4:
Once the frame was up and sort of level/vertical (this is a garden screen, not a palace, after all) I fastened the brushwood screen to the frame. I used fine wire (0.9 mm diameter), galvanised for outdoor use, to bind the brushwood to the frame. I stapled the wire to the frame through the brushwood, which tightened the wire. Just occasionally the wire snapped because it was too tight.
I knew that one length of the brushwood screen would not be enough for one of the walls - the wall was 3.2 m long, the brushwood only 3m. I had to join a new brushwood panel to the one I had fixed to the frame, and then cut the new panel short. This proved to be easier than I had thought because the wire that held the brushwood together was very flexible, and I could simply take a few strands of the brushwood out of the new panel and use the wire thus freed to join the new panel to the old. I used the strands I removed later in the project.
- Step 5:
Once I had added the screen to the frame it all looked pretty good. But it was not yet time to sit back and enjoy the result. I had noticed that professionally-built brushwood fences had a horizontal finishing strip of brushwood on top, and I thought this would be a good way to finish off the top of the screen. There was some of the brushwood left over, so I removed it from its wire and formed it into round sections about 100mm in diameter, which I bound to the top plate of the frame using the wire.
