Introduction: Easy(ish) Garden Seat / Bench / Tree Protector

By www.facebook.com/stephen.taylor.
About: I am a Marine Engineer in the RNZN (45 years done in various navies) and am looking forward to retirement!!! so I can do more messing about with tools

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