Easy(ish) Garden Seat / Bench / Tree Protector

Stephen Taylor
by Stephen Taylor
12 Materials
$100
3 Hours
Medium

You can never have too much garden seating, and my wife had planted some fruit trees (Grapefruit, plum and Banana), which were often run into by our clumsy dogs. So as I had a couple of hours to spare and a fair bit of timber left over from other projects* -- here we go

* I am terrible at estimating how much wood I need for doing things and always order too much

Step 1: Materials and Tools

A couple of 2.4 m fence posts

Some 4x2 (about 9m)

Decking

Nails (150mm - 6inch and 75mm - 3 inch)

Chop saw

Jigsaw

Hammer

Spirit level

Tape Measure

Drill

Post Hole digger

Step 2: Cut the Rails and the Legs

I cut 6 lengths of 4x2 for the rails 1.5 m long, to make them a little more aesethically pleasing (ie less chunky) I cut a 45 degree bevel at each end

I also cut 6 pieces of 4x4 for legs, these were 800mm long (so I could get 3 out of each post)

Step 3: Making the Frames

I nailed the rails (2) to the legs (2) using the delicate carpentry of 6 inch nails

Step 4: Setting Out

I put the frames in position and measured the angle between them using a big protractor (which I stole from somewhere years ago!) 120 degrees between them

This gave me the positions to dig the holes

Step 5: Dig It Baby!!

I used my ancient post hole digger for the holes, this thing, despite being 50 years plus old is so efficient for digging, planting etc, I borrowed a motorised one once and it was slower and bruising, I love this thing!

The chicken was a huge help!!

Step 6: Frames in Position

All put in place at a comfortable seat height and levelled

Step 7: Planning the Seat Base

I'm not a big fan of straight lines so....

Using a couple of pieces of scrap and a long piece of plastic conduit, plus a couple of nails I planned out the curves of the seat that I wanted.

I then used that as a template for cutting the decking

Step 8: Decking Nailed on and Cut to Shape

I nailed all the pieces of decking on with 75mm nails and marked the curves with a vivid/sharpie/marker pen (depending what country you are in!)

I then cut the curve with a Jigsaw

Just need to stain it I guess

All told took about 3 hours between rainstorms

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  3 questions
  • Susan Cox Susan Cox on Aug 04, 2018

    Hi--lovely job. I'm not much of a woodworker and have a question--did you cut all the seat pieces individually before installation or install them and then cut them with a jigsaw or something?

  • Sunny Sunny on Aug 04, 2018

    great job but I hope you intend to round off those 6 sharp corners???

  • Mimi303 Mimi303 on Aug 11, 2018

    Being new to woodworking, where is a good place to find out about 'leveling'

    and securing it? For me, it would be best to watch someone doing it and talking me through it. That's not looking good!

    Are the 4x4's just leveled and resting in place or are they cemented in?

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