Terracing

In our small home in the chestnut forest there are two little (unfortunately not communicating) gardens, about 35 square meters [377 square feet] each.

The CAD project

One is situated in the front of the house, and it is enough level. Most of it is cultivated with grass , flowers and a few fruit trees, but we also planted some vegetables and herbs.
We grow most of our vegetables in the other garden in the back, which is kind of difficult because since we live in a mountainous area, the ground yields to a steep slope. Therefore we decided to make some works to be able to make better use of it.
We started to fix this piece of land two years ago, cleaning it from monstrous nettle bushes and other weeds, a thing which revealed also the base of a big chestnut tree still sprouting new branches that we had to cut back.
Then we built a little path with steps and a hairpin bend that allows easy access to the whole garden. We planted some fruit trees (a pear, fig, cherry and a mediar). In the lower part, limited by a wall with reinforced concrete, we leveled an area, cleaned it from the stones and filled it in with good fertile dirt. Last year, besides this flat area, we planted a lot of tomatoes and other vegetables also on the slopes. That gave us a good harvest, even if, there, the work was kind of difficult. For this reason we decided to build some terraces (this year we built the first). Terraces, besides making work much easier in the garden, helps to prevent landslides caused by heavy rains.

Me, building the terrace

Given the success of this first terrace, in the fall i will start to build another one, but a little bigger.

The original idea, copied by some solutions i saw in other gardens, was to secure one or two tree trunks in the dirt, perpendicularily to the direction of the slope, obtaining a kind of step were a flat amount of dirt could accumulate. The project has then evolved in building a real "wall" made of trunks laid upon each other, about 50cm [1.6'] tall, 2meters [6.6'] large, bordered by two other sides about 1 meter [3.3'] long. The result looks like a big box in wood 2 m² [21.5 ft²] wide, clinging to the slope, perfectly flat.

The supporting poles you can see in the photos are four steel pipes 1 meter long, unused material i already had. They stuck out about half a meter from the dirt, so they are buried half a meter. The trunks are sectioned in half. They were obtained from nine pieces two meters long (six for the front part and three, cut in the right sizes, for the sides). Their diameter is 8cm, so the total height is a little less than 50cm. I bought them for 3.50€ each at Leroy Merlin. They were already treated with a chemical protection with a high pressure system, but i preferred to paint them one layer of waterproof paint. The trunks are attached to the poles with some screws. The corners are kept together with some angular metal strap. The total expense was, so, 31.50€ for the wood plus about 10€ for other materials.

The final result, with some veggies already planted and covered with hail-protection netting.

The cold frame

The CAD project

All of you older than 40, as myself, for certain must remember the popular TV show MacGyver. For younger people and those that have short memories, Italy's La7 TV network is currently airing reruns, monday to friday at about 4.00pm.
This series is about a bunch of action/thriller plots, where the protagonist, since he doesn't have the usual improbable James Bond-style super-technological tools available, is very good in finding equally improbable solutions with anything that happens to come in handy. And so for example he ends up building a bomb with a soda bottle, a package of fertilizer and a dog collar, maybe remotely controlled with a make-up mirror, the bottom of a broken glass and the cap of the previously mentioned soda bottle. Obviously at the end of the episode our hero will defeat, at least for today, the bad guys.

R, English-American mothertongue, made me laugh a lot explaining that MacGyver's art of "winging it" was so popular in the States that the name itself became, in the popular slang, a verb: "to macgyver", with also its proper past and participle "macgyvered" and the continuous forms "macgyvering".
In few words it means something like "to solve a problem cheaply with a smart solution, using whatever possible that one already has". In particular it defines the success in managing the little bricolage works for the house. In italian it could be translated with the verb "mecgaiverare", although it sounds really ugly!

Spring is coming (hopefully) and R has already begun to have some seeds sprouting in plastic cups she keeps cozy in the house. Before being transplanted in their final destination (the dirt of the garden), the little plants will have to spend some time in little vases on the terrace, having the light of the sun but still being protected from the air, that in this area is still cold. For this purpose we need a cold frame. I don't know the Italian word to define this thing that R described for me, but i can say my grandpa used something like that too.
It is a kind of wooden box, open in the bottom and with a top part sloping toward the sun. It is made by one or more transparent windows, that can be opened in the hot days.

So here i am in MacGyver's shoes, to project and build the cold frame.

Work in progress.

I built the sides with lightweight boards, the ones that are used to decorate the walls. I found them second-quality, i cut and put them together with a more solid structure made out of stronger pieces of wood.
The windows are two transparent plastic sheets, assembled in a wooden frame, then attached to the sides by hinges.

Here is the final result

All of this costed 29.50 euros (15 for the plastic sheets, 12.50 for the matchboards, 2 for the hinges) plus some waterproof impregnating paint to protect the wooden parts (22 euros for a 2.5 liters can, but i used just a little bit of it). The rest was material i had left over when i built the work table.

...I macgyvered it!

The work-table in the garage

My blog friends already know that since for a job i am a software engineer, which is a conceptual activity, in my free time i like instead to be involved with manual abilities, to take care of concrete things that can be touched, handled, modeled. Besides my passion for gardening and its satisfaction for the production of genuine fruits and vegetables (actually the merit for this should be given to Mother Nature that pretty much does all of the job), i like to deal with little works for the house. One essential tool for doing this activity is a work-table. Not having one, and not even having the space to put it (once i put the car in the garage, there is not much space left over) i thought to build one by myself. A tip-top one. ;-) Obviously it would have been very helpful to have a work-table to get through this enterprise, but if i had had one i wouldn't have started it at all, so i had to manage without. The idea was to spend the less money that i could, and to give a second life to some unused material i had around, in particular two wooden boards for house-building, sized about 50cm by 200cm [20" by 79"], those ones that are used for the scaffolds or to model the reinforced concrete (that were left over by the masons of the house building yard), and a couple of plywood foils i could get from the company i work for, that were used for the packaging of some products and were so destined to the garbage bin.

The CAD project of the table (seen from the bottom)

As a first thing i made the project on the pc with a CAD software, using the standard measure for the height (90cm [35"]) and other dimensions compatible with the material i had. The operation was for me quite easy because that CAD is the same software i use at work. I cut the right size the boards and i worked them with the vibrating sander (to remove little pieces of cement, the waterproof paint and to make them the smoothest i could). I removed the structure of the packaging from the plywoods, i cut them the right size and sandblasted them too. Then i glued with vinyl paste the two boards, side by side, to the two plywoods, one on the top and the other on the bottom. In order to let the glue do its job, i left it for one week all well-pressed with some bricks on the top. I wanted to use also some nails or screws to attach the plywoods to the boards better but it didn't look necessary at all, the glue was enough.

Left: sanding the boards; right: preparing the plywoods

At a bricolage shop i bought some rough ledges (the cheapest), that i cut the right size and sanded too.

The ledges, cut and sanded.

I joined with some angular metal straps (and some other vinyl paste) the ledges to build the structures of the legs. Then i painted everything with some waxed impregnating water paint, to protect and make the surfaces stronger. The fixed parts of the legs, after being hinged to the mobile ones, they have been attached to the wall with some nog-screws.

Left: all the parts ready to be put together; right: the legs fixed to the wall

Finally i attached to the structure the top plane, screwing it to the fixed parts of the legs with hinges.

Here the final result. Left: the table open, right: closed

I liked this work a lot. It came out exactly how i wanted, and even better looking than how it's supposed to be (at the end it's only a work table for the garage!). I enjoyed the work very much and i am satisfied so much that i am almost planning to build some furniture for the house (which we need very much)... I wonder if my wife agrees :-) It was very cheap: 24 euros for the ledges to make the legs, 15 euros for the paint, 10 euros for the glue, about 15 euros for the metal straps, the hinges, the screws and other necessities (total 64 euros).