Out of sight out of mind trellis - workshop

I just finished this little project the day before Ireland went into its second lockdown. There wasn't a big urgency with it but I just wanted to get it done and dusted before having to take a long break from making, yet again.

If you follow my usual blog about sculpture this may seem a bit out of place but when there is not a pile of sand, snow or ice that needs carving I spend most of my time making something or other to put food on the table. I haven't talked about much of this part of my work as I am saving this content for when I am finished getting through the sculpture posts but just for a change, I thought I would talk about this one now.

My approach to woodworking is very much like my approach to sculpture. Start with the big lines and then work out the details as I encounter them.

This trellis was built to hide some air conditioning units at the back of a Hotel in Dublin. What air conditioning units? you may ask? Exactly, my plan worked and the little corner looked a bit neater and less industrial. For hose playing along at home, I used pressure treated timber and some artificial ivy to dress it. Artificial was the way to go because they wanted no maintenance.

I built the whole thing in my little temporary workshop laying out painters tape on the floor to work my dimensions to. I wanted the whole thing to be like a piece of Ikea furniture which I could simply assemble when I got to site. The whole thing was spray painted with Ronseal quick-drying wood stain. Apparently, it does exactly what it says on the tin. And, then I attached the ivy with a stapler. Not the most hi-tech solution but the cleanest way to do it, hiding each staple under a leaf.

My main issue was that the ground was not level so I made everything as adjustable as possible and levelled up when I installed it. I also needed a door in order to access the switches on the right.

Unfortunately, the client decided that when it was all in place and together that they needed to access the fronts of the units and so the front of the trellis had to be removable.

Silly me, I had screwed everything from the backside to hide the screw heads so I had to take the whole thing down again and just add some simple pins at the front which they could easily remove by hand and lift the whole panels out.

In the end I got it to work out well but I was quite annoyed to have to redo what I had already done.

The thing is as strong as houses and maybe a bit overkill for what they wanted but I always like to finish a job to my satisfaction before the clients. If I'm happy they'll be happy.

I do hope the Build community can grow here on Hive, it really seems like perfect fit . I will hopefully have more content to bring when the lockdown is over. For now I will continue staking the tokens and do my best to curate.