I’ve been analyzing that side wall of the trellis bed with the bowed log on the bottom, and decided we needed to make a change.

The plan had been to cut joins into the horizontal logs and the vertical posts, then secure them in place. There will be four of posts, about 6′ apart but, the more I looked at it, the more I realized that in order for the posts to be in line with each other, I’d have to cut away far too much wood. It would weaken them too much.

There was one solution, though, that could be done before the end pieces were attached. The pairs of logs are attached to each other, but not to the ground.

So I snagged my daughter and some rope, and we reversed the wall.

I neglected to take photos at the start. To carry the logs, we wrapped some rope around the ends and used them as handles to lift and carry the logs around to face the other way. It was awkward, but it worked.

The rebar that joins the logs goes all the way through. At the end in the foreground, barely an inch goes through. At the far end, there’s almost 3 inches of rebar that could be jammed into the ground as we lined up and set the logs in place again. Since I cut the ends of the walls in line with each other, we had to make sure they still matched, so that the walls at the ends will be straight once they’re added.

This shows better, why I decided to switch it around. You can see where I used the chainsaw to flatten the top of the base log, for the other log to rest on! 😄 That worked out on the ends, at least! This is where the bow sticks out the furthest, pretty much in the middle. The vertical posts would have been on either side of this section. The top log is pretty straight, so I’ll probably just flatten the logs where they will come in contact, rather than actually cut joins.

But that will be done after the end pieces are added. Technically, once those are in place, we could still move the entire bed if we had to, but that would not be a very good idea!

The Re-Farmer