How To Build a Raised Garden Bed

hi i'm shannon from houseimprovements.com in this video today i'm going to show you how i take this pile of lumber and steel sheeting and turn it into a raised flower bed finished product looks something like this so it's pretty simple design but still good looking and it uses some really basic materials that you can get at pretty much any lumber store the metal this metal sheeting you may have to order in they may not have it in stock but the rest of it's all just simple uh eight foot two by fours and in this case i'm using untreated two by fours okay so uh to see how i do that let's uh get started i'm gonna turn that pile of material over there into some usable pieces cut to the lengths for my project and then i'll show you how i assemble it okay so i'm just going to quickly cut all my pieces that i need for my raised planter yours is probably going to vary depending on what sizes you choose but i'll discuss my sizes and show you the cut list and everything of of what i built my planter is basically 94 inches long and about 34 inches deep like wide and that's a couple feet off the ground so but anyways i'll show you that all after right now we'll probably just speed it up i'll cut this material and then we'll get to assembling okay so i've got all the pieces cut up and i set some of them out of the way here to the side because the main things i want to build first are the frames so you're going to have two two front or a front and a back so that's the long frame that's what i'm referring to is front and back and then you're going to have the two ends which are the shorter frames in my case and like i said i'm gonna near the end of the video i'll put up a piece of paper that kind of shows the cut list and uh material list and that sort of thing so just stay tuned for that but i've what i've got left here on the bench is just the materials that i need for the frames so i think what i'll do is i'll do a couple of the shorter frames first so i'll maybe put this out of the way because these are for the long just kind of get those out of our way this is an extra piece for something else you'll see later okay so we've got got two ends now you want to look your two by fours over i guess uh looking for this the side or the face that you want to face out that looks the best or looks the way you want it to look for your finished product um so i'm gonna it doesn't matter if you have them up or down i'm just saying orientate them so they're the same way when you're putting things together so basically what we're gonna do in in my design is we're going to end up building the ends which will be two boxes or two shapes just like that i'm gonna use uh number eight sorry no number ten five inch uh deck screws if you're using pressure treated wood in your case or something then you'll want to use a acq approved or treated screw i'm not i'm using standard lumber here so this is just a basically a zinc coated screw but i'm using it a little heavier gauge and because it is a longer longer length because basically what i'm going to do is i'm going to end up putting to put this frame together i'm going to put two screws in each of these connections okay so i need them long enough because this is three and a half inches in my case so i need to still get some some decent meat there to for the end of the screw to get a hold of i am also going to pre-drill my ends so if i take uh what did i do with my pencil here it is i'm just going to take a scrap of wood here and i'm just going to mark on on this piece here so i i have an idea where my three and a half is for my pre-drilling so i'll just quickly put a mark it's just a guide okay so what i want to do is in this area this is how it's going to go together again i need to get two screws through there now i'm going to pre pre-drill it and i'm using a number 10 um screw there as i said and i believe i'm using a what is it a 5 no i went to 9 60 60 thirds for the drill bit so i'm not i don't really want this in this case this screw just to drop through this first piece of wood i still want it to grab some some wood there too as it's threading in so i went a little smaller than you would normally uh pre-drill and also you'll you'll notice that my drill bit isn't long enough to go right through but it's going to go far enough that we shouldn't have any issues with splitting and this is kind of a standard length drill bit that you're going to have for this size a drill bit so short of going out and buying one that's another inch longer i'm just going to use this one so so basically i just want to eyeball these ones for the short ends i want to come in about three quarters of an inch to an inch off the ends and i just want to drill a nice plum pre-drilled hole okay so that's the first one now i'm going to do the same thing from this line that i marked just come back three quarters to one inch and i'm gonna pop a hole in there and i'll do that on both ends you can measure that out if you don't trust yourself but like i said just three quarters to one inch away okay so that'll do our first frame i'm just going to mark this one out while i'm in the business of pre-drilling those holes some like that and that okay so those are all pre-drilled ready for my next process so i'm going to grab my long screws and i'm working on a flat pretty flat bench here so it helps me to be able to flush this up pretty easily just by simply laying the parts down and i just want to drive some screws in there so i'm flushing up this end and kind of flushing the top and these are like i said five inch five to six inch should be good if you're doing the same kind of design i'm just putting in them in there just a little bit countersunk i didn't pre-drill it this these ends would likely split more times than they wouldn't so that's why i pre-drilled it most of the way okay so you can see here just with the wood and everything a clamp might come in handy just to help hold that together since i'm working by myself so i'll just stick a clamp on this end just to kind of hold it so that i don't have to manhandle it twice so much okay so there's the frame and this is going to be the the good side that's going to face out so i'm just marking an x on the inside so i don't get it mixed up after and i'll throw this other one together as well now uh it is a planter it's an outdoor piece of furniture or whatever you want to call it so uh it's in this case we're not going for something that's uh you know pristine condition that's why we're just using uh standard lumber so you're gonna have the odd spot where you're you know it's just gonna be maybe have a nod in it or some roughness but in this case for the look i'm going for that's that's gonna be fine if you want something a little more uh high finish or high quality finish then you're gonna have to go to a better quality lumber i was lucky to find two by fours that had four corners on them up here in canada so usually they've got bark at least on one corner you could put construction adhesive in these joints if you wanted to i don't think it's going to be necessary by the time i put these screws in and i attach the sheet metal on the inside it's going to be lots holding it together the customer wants to stain or paint these themselves so that's why i'm not doing any kind of finish on them if it was me i would probably stain or paint them first before i at least before i put the tin on just be a lot easier but they wanted to do this themselves so and for all i know maybe they aren't maybe they won't even paint or do anything just let them weather i don't know they were talking about painting them i think okay so we've got that uh this is my nicer face there this side's a little rougher so this is the inside you can see i was talking about right here about you know obviously your lumber isn't going to be perfect on some edges so okay so that's the small frames now really we're going to do basically the same thing with the with the long ones so get them up here and i'm going to pre-drill them as well oops just about don't have enough bench for all this stuff um okay so these are my nicer faces so i'm gonna keep that yeah so just like this and now on this one on these ones what i want to do is i still i'm still screwing these together just the same as i did the others so i still need some marks on here as a guide but what i want to do on these ones is i want to keep the end screw out here on the end right out here i'm going to keep it a little further away and that's because when we go to screw this whole thing together the ends are going to butt into this and i need to screw through here as well to join the four corners together so if i have screws too close here everything's kind of in the way so i'm going to make sure i keep these a good inch and a quarter from the end on these ones so that i don't have any interference with screws and messing around hopefully but same same idea i just want to pre-drill them and then we'll screw it together [Music] okay now on these uh long panels as well if you remember back in the example of the one i built already there's going to be a center piece of wood in that frame as well so we need to find the center of this panel or this board uh what are we 45 and a quarter i think let's see if that works out [Music] this will be one of these here oh my math isn't too good so it must be 44 and three quarters yes 44 and three quarters so i want to again just mark this so that i can pre-drill those probably not as critical this probably wouldn't split out here in the middle but i'll just pre-drill it anyways like set so of these out of the way okay so good face up best face up and i want to screw these together now again 5 inch number 10 deck screw is what i'm using okay now i'll flip it around so i can do the other side other edge [Music] so and again i need a little squeeze you can see i've got a little little gap there so uh i just wanna finish getting these screws in and i'm gonna do the exact same thing with the second frame as i just did i think that was 44 and three quarters i think yep [Music] okay so i'll pre-drill those holes and we'll put this frame together alrighty so we've got our four pieces four frames and we can start putting some some metal on so i can get rid of these big five inch screws now i'm using uh these are actually screws for this four sheet metal or metal roofing these ones i'm using are about inch and a quarter and i think they're a number 14 or something like that screw now you don't have to use this big of a screw it's just i had these on hand they're the right color not that anybody's going to see them after but yeah i decided to use those if you're going to use a deck screw or something like that uh you may have a problem where you're going to have to pre-drill possibly the screw locations where these will just will just thread right in so anyways i'm using them because that's what i have so uh now the metal the tin goes on the inside of your frame so you want that on the bad side if you have a if you have a side that's worse or rougher than the other and that's the side that you're going to want to put it on so i'm going to flip this over work bench and i'm going to grab my metal so the way my design is set up you watched me cut those sheets of metal uh they were eight feet long they are thirty three and a half inches wide you watched in the video i cut them cut four pieces out of each one of those sheets now i've kind of designed the these boxes around uh using you know average sized pieces that anybody can transport uh in their in their vehicle from the store so i used eight foot lumber these would have almost done about an eight and a half foot box with the amount of tin i have and with the normal overlap but because i'm using eight foot lumber i just have to overlap a little bit further and you'll see what i mean here when i get started so we've got our pieces here kind of just have a look make sure if any sides better than the other now when i put this thing together the end frames are going to butt into but into this end here you know inside here so i'm just going to give myself a bit of a mark so i don't get the tin too far far out to the edge where it's interfering with you know when i install the end the end frames so i'll just get myself a little bit of a pencil line depending on your tin if it's a fairly flat edge it's really not going to matter but you don't want a high profile like like it is here um interfering with uh what you got going on with the overlap or the butt joint so what i kind of did is i i laid my sheets out and figured out you know what looked better as far as the lap going over under um because i found it changed a little bit depending on the sheets so obviously it doesn't matter what it looks like on this side we want the other side so you can kind of see how the the pieces overlap each other and they nest together because of the profile so i just kind of laid things out to get an idea before i screwed anything down so i know if i'm you know going going about the right way or if it's going to work out or what's going on so then i just want to have a bit of a look on this side and i think they aren't they aren't laying down quite as nice as they did on the other one so i'm going to try lapping them the other way just to see what what happens i think that's gonna work out better i'll just get rid of this one sheet so i can kind of show you what i'm seeing so i'm just kind of holding them together to see you know what this is going to look like when it's when it's together because you hopefully don't want the seam to look like that you want it to sit really tight together it seems like this wants to fit nicer if i go underneath so i'm gonna do okay and my length was pretty good the way it was working out before you can see that uh this total frame on mine is 20 25 inches and i cut these pieces to 24 so i've got some leeway up and down which is what i want right because uh it doesn't have to be tight none of this is going to be seen once the once the planter is filled with dirt so so i think i'm pretty good here i think i can live with that i just want to see what looks like sheet on again yeah i'm going to be all right i was just making sure i wasn't too too long that way so let's get this first sheet tacked down at least now you don't need a whole lot of these screws on here once the dirt's in it really can't go anywhere and obviously you want to put the screw in the the down rib not up here you're going to squeeze the sheets okay so just kind of get it evenly situated from the end here like so now it's very easy with some of these sheet metal sheets to stretch them or shrink them by putting your screws in on an angle or whatever so you got to kind of be watching that as you go to be sure you're not stretching things too much out of shape okay so that's about what i was putting in each sheet now one thing i don't want to forget is okay this is the bottom down here in the middle of the planter on the bottom i'm gonna have this this cleat going in between to try to keep the bottom from wanting to spread once you get some dirt in it so i need to make sure i cut the metal out in that area uh to allow for that and that's going to be right right in the middle again so we know that that number was 44 and three quarters i'm going to go 44 and a half uh yeah i'm gonna go 44 and a half just to give myself a little bit extra leeway uh that's if i go that big that'll give me a little extra room i'm going to pop over there and cut that out if i can so this tin you watched me in the earlier in the video i was just cutting it with these these uh metal shears i use these for vinyl siding and thinner tin like this you can use aviation snips too i'm going to try these shears first [Music] okay so i got that good enough uh so we got that then i can move down here to my next bunch of sheets make sure things are sitting nice looks all right [Music] so this is just uh i believe they call this a galvalume is what this finish is kind of a galvanized tin corrugated metal there's different profiles in that but i like this this look it's kind of an older fashion look i could cut this with a grinder too i cut it all with snips just so i wouldn't have any sparks here in the shop but you could cut it with a grinder and a and a cut off wheel so you can see with that putting the screws in i'm not getting too fancy i'm not worrying about if they're straight or not because really in reality nobody can see these once once this is all built so okay so we got that first one on there you can see joints pretty good once you get some dirt against there that'll help too uh yeah so that's one done i've got to do the other three pieces and then we can move on to putting it together okay now i designed the the width the i knew what the customer kind of wanted for width and i basically also based it on the full width of one of these panels like i said remember these pieces are going in between the front and back okay so so the metal can can span basically the full full distance across this front and back if it needs to and that should be what ends up happening here yep so we'll zap some screws in that and uh then like i said i'm gonna do the other couple probably off camera and we'll come back and put it together okay so here's one of my ends okay i'm gonna zip off these other ones or zip them together and then we'll come back and put this box together okay so i've got all the panels covered now and it's time to put the the main box all together i'm going to use number 10 um three and a half inch deck screws uh the first thing i'm gonna do is put this bottom center spreader bar or brace in here okay so that's just flush or even a little bit higher would be fine i'm gonna try to attempt to build this on the bench where it's easier for you guys to see [Music] so we'll see how it goes so we've got that now we need to put an end panel up here okay so like i said before i want to put this end here oh what am i doing pin goes in uh this here flush with that we're just gonna pull this together uh if i throw a small clamp on it keep it from falling over well i'm lining things up actually that lined up pretty good okay and we'll this is where we kept the the screws back a little bit i'm gonna tell where did i screw that other one right in the middle i think yeah stick one here i'm just pre-drilling that because we're fairly close to the end i'm about three quarters of an inch away try to prevent that from splitting on us there that's better okay so i'll do the same thing on the other end if i can manage that down here i think if i slide this down i'll probably be out of your picture here on the end you basically get the idea what i'm doing here anyways so inside in right this time again i'm just flushing it up on the end just like i did on the other end okay so we got that now basically i'm just going to go around to the other side and put the other side piece on and then i'm going to maneuver it down onto the ground and show you how i put the top on okay so here i've got this planter down on the ground and you get a bit of an idea of the size now basically the client wanted a pretty pretty wide planter really uh normally i think these would only be maybe two thirds as wide as this but they also wanted something high enough that they could sit down on when they're working you know now i'm going to put a a finished edge all the way around you can kind of see it on the other one on the top which is just going to be 2x4 but it's it's partially to protect the the homeowner because the tops of these sheets are are jagged and they're sharp and everything and plus sitting down on this isn't that comfortable but once we get something a little wider it's a little easier on the butt to sit there and and work or weed or whatever you want to do so i had to cut these these pieces already earlier and uh mitered the corners and i'm gonna attach them using three inch deck screws and a little bit of construction adhesive in these in these miters so the way i've got it designed is that when these go on they're going to hang off the outside about half an inch and then whatever hangs inside will cover the edge of the tin plus a little bit further again too to to you know protect anybody who's sitting up on there so i'm just going to get this first one started so like i said i'm going to put a little construction heat adhesive on it so we'll just put a little bead on here and this will just help hold things together and uh hopefully the camera can see what i'm doing over there so i'm gonna put that one corner together and start out with i am just going to put a three inch screw right through the right through the miter here so i'm not too worried about getting things lined up exactly perfect just yet i just need to get this screw stitched in there to help hold it together okay so you're trying to get this flush and your corner decent out there so i'm going to do the same thing actually no now that i've got that i can probably get it to sit here and start getting it lined up yeah it's going to work here so like i said i i'm looking for a half inch overhang of all the sides on the outside so that's easy enough to do a little bit of measuring and i can i can manipulate that in so i can get one screw in here let's just make sure this doesn't move on me i can get a screw in here now these corners have quite a few screws in them if you remember we've got four going down through the top we've got some horizontally we've got this extra one i put in the miter so i'm going to just stay back oh just just inside this outer leg here so i'm going to be somewhere in this range and i need to stay in oh let's say about an inch and a half something like that if i stick that there get one in the middle here [Music] actually something i didn't do was check if this box is square i better do that before i get too carried away get it at least sitting half close to square and if you've watched some of my other videos you've probably seen me do this before but when you're working on a a rectangle or a square where you've got you know either all four sides the same length or you've at least got opposing sides the same length you should be able to measure your diagonals corner to corner and if those diagonals are are equal then your box is square and actually as soon as i measured that one over there i knew it was because i remembered 100 from the other one so it's actually sitting good so we're okay so yeah that's an easy way to check for square on on something like this it's just diagonal measurements so we can throw this screw back in we were about to put one here in the middle i just kind of want to get things roughly put into place and then we'll screw it all off so of course i want my best sides that i have up for these uh pieces because you know this is what people are going to touch and sit on and that sort of thing no it wouldn't be a bad idea to run the sander over them or even the router on these outer edges actually these two by fours are pretty good but i probably will run orbital sander over it quickly just with like an 80 grit just to take off any splinters and and uh you know slivers and that sort of thing try to make it smooth as kind of possible for outdoor garden furniture we're good there [Music] we'll go down to this end and get our last piece put in and then we can get everything secured down you can see this is uh not that bad of a project to do it's actually taken longer than i thought it was going to but the video shooting always adds a bit of time i had a little bit of camera problems which you might have noticed but overall i'm not exactly sure probably took me close to three hours i'm guessing with all my messing around i didn't keep real close track because i got stopped a couple times but okay so i'll stick a few more screws in between all those ones and that'll secure the top down well and i'm gonna hand bomb the camera around a little bit so you can get a little closer look all right so let's just uh pop the camera off so you can get a better look now i'll get a get a little closer you can kind of see how everything sort of goes together there's our there's our lip there and then inside you can see really once the dirt's in you know i don't know how full you're going to fill it exactly but probably three four inches from the top and yeah there's really not too much of this inside that ever is going to be seen there's our brace down there across the middle now one thought i did have because this is so so wide uh like i said this is a little wider than what i would typically kind of see i'm a little bit afraid that maybe this top in the middle is going to want to spread over time with the weight of the dirt and compaction and everything so part of this part of this idea of putting this brace in here is i was thinking if a person had had to down the line you could put a piece of threaded rod right through this whole thing with a nut out on each side you know you can countersink that nut in there and just run the threaded rod right through here in the middle and down you know six or eight inches and it'll be below the dirt still and it'll just keep that that middle from wanting to spread as it's probably got a little bit of let's see if i can it's actually sturdier than i thought it would be but just in time they may find that they have to do that which wouldn't be that hard to do but anyways you can kind of see what we've got going on here okay so i'm gonna get this camera sitting back up and we'll do a wrap up okay so we're all wrapped up on the the uh planter box project that i did here so i've got the two stacked together there just to create a bit of a backdrop pretty pretty basic project really uh overall cost uh this this actually cost me more than i originally planned because i'm shooting here during the pandemic uh lumber prices have just gone uh through the roof they pretty much tripled so this cost uh to build the two total and materials probably about a hundred dollars more than i was expecting so it was about four hundred dollars with them with the metal and the and the wood and a few miscellaneous screws and stuff to build these pro this project so so basically a couple hundred dollars each uh time wise i kind of did some looking back um i think it took me around two and a half hours to build the first one and then with when i shot the video and and built the second one that you just watched it basically took me about two hours uh not including all the trouble i had with the camera and stopping and stuff took me pretty much a day to shoot that because of the troubles i had but anyways so you know you're looking at a an afternoon or a day or whatever to build this uh you know by the time you go and pick up materials build them finish them and stain or paint them or whatever so so it's a decent little project for a day also i realized when i was planning this out that uh i kind of uh used dimensions and sizes and lumber that was pretty readily available and easy to transport so you know typical diy can go down to the to the store and order these materials or pick up these materials and build these the the metal sheeting depending what you use they may have in stock at your local store or you may have to order it so just check that out first um yeah i think i think it went well i think they look good hope the customers happy um riley you've got a little bit of staining and painting to do once i drop these off but uh i know you can handle it so we'll get that to you one other thing that i talked about i was going to add was this uh cut list this cut list is for one one planter and i'm not sure that you can really make that out very well on the screen there so i'll put a pdf or some kind of file in the description below the video so go down and check out that description check all our descriptions out in the videos because you're usually going to find some extra information or links to to some materials or products so check that out you'll find links there for our patreon page a lot of times we throw the forum link in there which is a great asset if you you know are doing some kind of project and you need some answers just some questions you have the forum is a perfect place to go and post your question up and you'll get an answer usually or two or three pretty quickly okay so check out the description obviously click the thumbs up button uh for watching the video uh share this video with all your friends i would appreciate that and uh yeah what else can i say oh subscribe have you not subscribed yet click the subscribe button right down there yeah this one here click that uh once you are subscribed you can set up your notifications if you want to be notified uh anytime we post new material okay so thanks for watching we'll see you in the next one hi it's shannon from houseimprovements.com would you like to see me take this pile of lumber and metal and build a raised bed garden planter thing freaking stop

Channel: HouseImprovements

Views: 91,843

Keywords: outdoor, yard, garden, plant, planter, bed, raised, how to, diy, build, assemble, cut, grow, quarantine, backyard, own, vegetables, veggies, gardening, lumber, construct, home, house, create, metal, flower, easy, simple

Id: 6uw56dcHRq8

Length: 43min 55sec (2635 seconds)

Published: Sat May 15 2021