Welcome to my blog. My name is Kerry, and I love to do DIY work around the home. While painting high ceilings and putting in garden beds seems to be easy for me, I find climbing into a tree with a saw to trim branches very scary and potentially dangerous. Luckily, over the years, I have gotten past the fear and have found ways to service my trees safely and efficiently without risking grave injury to myself. Sometimes, I admit that I have to call in the pros, but I'll help you identify when that's a necessity as well. Take a look at these posts. I hope they move, entertain and inform you.
Construction & Contractors Blog
If you are dismantling an old deck made of pressure treated decking, you have to dispose of the wood carefully. Wood treated with arsenic, for example, should not be burned, and it shouldn't be thrown in a landfill without permission either. Luckily, there are landfills that have special places to bury pressure treated decking, and there are facilities who can safely burn this type of old decking.
Alternatively, however, you can also reuse the decking. Here are four fun outdoor project ideas:
1. Raised Garden Beds
Have you always wanted to start a garden but never wanted to go through the work of clearing weeds, removing rocks or digging up grass? Then a raised garden bed is the perfect solution for you.
Use the old decking to create square or rectangular frames. Lay the frames on the ground where you want your raised garden beds. Then, line the frames with landscaping fabric, shovel in some organic soil and plant some seeds. Your garden is ready!
2. Wood Chips
If you would rather have hardy plants nestled in wood chips, you can use your old pressure treated decking for that landscaping project as well. Simply hire a wood chipper -- you can find them at many hardware or gardening supply shops.
Feed in your old pressure treated decking and watch as the machine spits out usable wood chips.
3. Horseshoe Pit
In addition to decorating your yard, your old pressure treated decking can also be turned into something fun. If you like lawn games, consider making a horseshoe pit.
A horseshoe pit features two square patches of sand with a straight metallic "target" protruding up from each of them. These sand patches sit across your yard from each other.
Along two sides of each sandy area, you build two rectangular frames with pieces of treated decking on top of them -- players stand on these sections of wood when they pitch the horseshoe to the opposite target.
In the back of each pit, you build a short "wall" of pressure treated decking -- this wall prevents horseshoes from going too far past the pit.
4. Arbor
If you want to grow some plants vertically, consider turning some of your old pressure treated pine into an arbor. There are multiple different designs, making it easy to use the old decking you have in the design that appeals the most to you.
You can make anything from a simple arch stained white to an elaborate bench nestled underneath a colourfully painted arbor full of winding vines. If you'd like to complete one of these projects but don't already have old wood, you can always purchase new treated pine decking to use. This will make these projects last even longer, since the wood won't have been through any wear before being used for this purpose.
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21 September 2015
