Sunday, April 14, 2013

The Bench Bone's Connected to the...

Trellis bone!

Tell me that you love the random crap that gets stuck in my head.

Ahhh, the joys of parenting a young'un.

Onto a more trellisy subject.


BAM!

That's one way of getting onto a subject.

Another would be to start at the beginning.

But I'm not that kinda gal....

Actually, I'll try to be. In the beginning, there was a finished bench. That finished bench inspired it's creator. It's creator created trellises from a 2x4.

Ok, ok. I'm done joking around. You cannot believe the chocolate-induced fit I'm in right now. I'll try to push through it.

For you.

The trellises were, in fact, inspired by the bench and created with a single 2x4. But the trellises aren't the only part of this build. If you follow me on Facebook, you'll have already seen my adorbs planters.


They were built entirely from scraps (read about it on my Facebook page). Those were just the beginning (maybe I do start at the beginning?!). After I got the know-how to build the basketweave pattern (from my bench build), I was able to tackle the trellises fairly easily. If you have mediocre wood-working skills (and use this as a guide), you'll be able to make your trellises from this wooden sketch.



That's my cut list. *Warning* Wood-talking babble until the next asterisk! One thing to note (if you do decide you want to build this) is that, for this specific cut list, the big squares are 12 1/2" wide by 12 1/4" tall (I mis-measured, apparently, and didn't make a perfect square).

The wood for this measures 3/8" x 3/4" (I cut a 2x4 into four 1x2s and then ripped three of those into these-sized strips), and the 3/4" is the measurement you see from the front. If you want to build something like this, you could definitely do it from three 1x2s, making sure the thin part is what's facing the front of the trellis. **

This was actually the 6 foot 2x4 that was my first-attempt failure here.

It's grateful for second chances. I asked.



So I got all four pieces built in two days and found an amazing blue exterior paint in the OOPS bin at Lowe's.

And came up with these.


Ultimately, I want to use these for cucumber vines, but in the meantime..


I have thorny pink pixie bougainvilleas. We actually removed a 20 year old bougainvillea bush from our front yard because it had waaay too many thorns, but since they are slow-growing bushes that I've seen be trained to a trellis, I figured I'd give them another chance.

But if they suck, I'm breaking up with them for good.

My favorite thing about them is how their colors go with the blue in the trellis.

Maybe that's the reason I gave them another chance.

Have you had any bougainvilleas? Did you tolerate the thorns because of their super pink-ness? Or were they dumped after the first date?

Y'know what? I changed my mind. My favorite part of this was that they were FREE!

3 comments:

  1. I love these! Love the design and love the color!

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  2. They look fab Gina. No wonder you were going nuts with the blue. Seriously, painting that lattice without using spray paint? Yikes! Better you than me!

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