Archive for August, 2010

DOUBLE BUNK DOG BASKET

August 12th, 2010

I am sure someone could make some money out of this one.

My lovely wife bought our two Jack Russel’s new dog baskets which are basically a canvas / wood construction. Although the dogs loved them they actaully took up a fair amount of space. The idea was to turn them into double bunk beds to halve the foot print.

As they have a wooden frame it was simply a case of screwing the legs together using a small block of wood. The result works really well – old man Oscar sleeps at the bottom and the young upstart Daisy takes the top. I can only see it being a problem if your dog cant jump  up – since our Daisy is regularly  caught on our much higher bed this isn’t a problem.

Here they are trying to look cheerful (actually bit suspicious of bosses intentions as it is nowhere near bed time) :

Dog double bunk

Dog double bunk

WOODEN DECK CONSTRUCTION – Part 1

August 11th, 2010

I am cheating a bit on this post because truth is I am already quite far down in the construction. Mind you it has taken me a while to get to this point. So far the main deck is complete with one of the staircases, with the two bigger still ones to go.

The main deck is 4 m wide and about 15 m long with 3 sets of stairs (one wrap around). We opted for 90mm  Garapa decking which we chose to lay smooth side up and to leave untreated. Fortunately the wood seems to be properly kiln dried so has showed little signs of splitting.

With regards to securing the deck I found nifty fixing system which is almost hidden and doesn’t require any screws through the deck. The resultant look is a very smooth clean finish.

It terms of support I used 2 rows of 75mm pole droppers + the wall of the house where possible. The poles support two main beams (225x50mm), with 150x38mm beams running the 4 m width of the deck at about 450mm centers. The result is a very stiff and stable surface surface which is great – I hate it when there is give on a deck because the design has skimped on support beams.

The most difficult part was definitely getting the planks to run in straight lines as this would be very noticeable on a 15m run. The whole operation was made easier by using the plank lever which lets you squeeze the planks together, however the method that I eventually settled on was to lay 5 or 6 rows of planks with the clips installed but not screwed down. I would then run a gut line about 50mm ahead of the last row with same offset from the house. Using the gut line as a reference I was able to make a mark on each bearer representing a straight run. I then made a wood spacer equal to the smallest of the measurements made from the gut line mark to the last row of decking. Then working form one end with the plank lever and the spacer as a reference I then fixed all 5 rows to the bearer. This way any deviations are corrected over 5 rows as the clips tended to space the planks evenly. I have included some pics below showing progress so far: