what's up everybody on today's project i'm going to show you how i built this diy trash can screen
horizontal privacy screen so here's a quick look at what the area looked like before we
got building and here is a quick sneak peek of what it looks like today let's get into the video
hey guys so this is a pretty simple project that really just consists of vertical four by four by
eights and then some horizontal one by sixes so for this privacy screen we're gonna need three
four by four by eight posts put in the ground vertically because these posts are eight feet tall
we're gonna dig down two feet so that our post is two feet into the ground leaving six feet of
post above grade for our screen so i used one of my existing fence posts to basically set the datum
for the six foot height so as you can see here it's a little bit low on the post but that's okay
because what i want to do is i want to put some crushed stone in the actual excavation so that
the post isn't sitting directly in contact with the earth and it will also be a little
bit advantageous for drainage so once i put that stone in the ground i'm double checking the level
to make sure it's pretty even and once i'm happy with the level it's time to actually mix up your
concrete and make it permanent so here i am just mixing up a standard high strength concrete mix
that i got from home depot i added water taking a look at the manufacturer's recommendations
from how much you should add but to be honest i pretty much just eyeballed it once the consistency
looked pretty good i went ahead and i poured it into the hole trying to do a good job of making
sure that it was evenly distributed around the vertical post i then grabbed my shovel and i got
out any of the remaining concrete and also just kind of poked you know the concrete and kind of
disturbed it to get rid of the air bubbles once i had the concrete in i used a post level to make
sure i was in good shape i double checked the height and then i moved on to the next vertical
post here what i'm doing is i'm compacting the stone that i already put in the hole
and here i am just double checking the height making sure it's level with the adjacent post
so once i was happy with how everything was lining up i went ahead and mixed up some more concrete
doing it the exact same way as before and once i got the consistency right
i moved over to the next post and started applying the concrete to the hole do your
best to make sure the concrete's even around the post and then check the level before moving on
so before installing any of the horizontal boards we took this time to paint the vertical post
jet black with a 100 acrylic exterior paint and you may have also noticed that a patio magically
appeared and we actually built that on the last episode so if you're interested in seeing how we
put that patio together i'll leave a link for that above but at this point let's get back to showing
you the painted vertical posts so at this point it's time to think about installing the horizontal
one by six pressure treated boards the first thing we did is we measured the distance between the two
posts and then we cut all of our one by sixes before we even got started so i highly recommend
that you start with the bottom horizontal board first that way gravity is on your side as you
work your way up and you'll see what i mean in a minute but this requires you to do some planning
to make sure that your top board is going to land in an appropriate location so it's highly
worthwhile to do a little bit of math and add up your spacer thickness as well as the width of
your horizontal boards just to be sure that your top board lines up in a place that makes sense
so we use two methods to mount the horizontal boards to the vertical posts the first way you're
seeing here which is just pre-sinking screws at an angle the second way was using a pocket hole jig
but because these screws are going to be hidden inside the privacy screen and no one's ever going
to see them there's really no need to use pocket holes because they're already going to be hidden
on the inside so we cut our first horizontal boards pretty tight so they would actually hold up
within the vertical post as you're seeing there and then once we were okay with the boards being
level by themselves and also level with each other we went and we did the angle screw method
and just attached it directly to the vertical post but very important here the way we
installed it is we made sure that the face of the horizontal board was flush with the vertical post
and we did this for every board making sure it was flush going all the way up it's extremely critical
that your first board is perfectly level because all of the boards after that are going to be based
on the level of the first one so take your time on the first board hey guys if you like this type of
content please consider dropping a like down below it really helps me out with the algorithm and also
maybe consider subscribing if you want to help my channel out and you like diy content like this
let's get back to the build so for this screen we used some left over 5 8 inch fence pickets as
spacers so we would basically just place those on the horizontal post below put the next horizontal
board on top and then screw it in place so as you can see there we have the spacers going across and
we did that for all of them going up so this is what i meant when i met gravity's on your side
this way you can just stack them up going all the way up and then secure them to the vertical post
pretty easily with the screws so i would recommend this method my brother right there is just doing
some fine tuning to make sure that it's flush with the front face and then i'm going and screwing it
in there we went back later on and made sure that all the screws were sufficiently sunk into the
wood and made sure they were secured properly but this really was a pretty redundant process
it went pretty smoothly with our method and i think starting at the bottom and working your way
up is definitely the way to go so here's a quick recap just showing where we're at so far again
all of the front faces are level we made sure that they're perfectly flush between the horizontal
board and the vertical board there and then we have the two screws on each horizontal board
going directly into the vertical four by four post and my brother right there is making a few more
cuts because we were a little bit short on the horizontal post and here's a look at the final
horizontal board that we're installing on the longer length of the privacy screen
so here's just a quick time lapse showing the process all the way through we're securing the
horizontal board to the vertical and then we're moving the spacers up to the next one we then cut
our horizontal board put it in place secured it to the vertical four by four and repeated
this process all the way up so we actually built this diy trash can screen slash horizontal privacy
screen last summer before lumber prices went to the moon so you could do some variations such as
fence pickets attached directly to the vertical 4x4 post to save money but this is just how we
did it there really are endless possibilities your last step is to put some post caps on
top of your vertical posts and now let's take a reminder look at what this area used to look like
thank you guys so much for watching if you enjoyed this video i really would appreciate if you could
drop a like down below and consider subscribing to my channel if you like content like this
or if you want to see how i built this sectional couch or this diy fire pit table i got a bunch of
new content coming your way again i appreciate y'all and i'll see you on the next one you