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).