- Hey, did ya hear the one about the keen gardener
who woke up one morning to discover
that the season had turned to spring?
No? He was so excited, he wet his plants. (laughs)
True story. (laughs)
(whistling)
Yep, that's pretty much the best I've got.
G'day, folks, Uncle Knackers here,
from DIY for Knuckleheads, and welcome to the spring edition
where I'm going to show you how to build your very own,
self-supporting trellis fence.
Let's get this show on the road.
Oh, yeah, and earlier, the dad joke,
not my best work, my apologies.
So with springtime in the air here in Australia,
it's a great time to get out in the garden
and get some of those jobs done,
which is what I'm doing here,
by building a big trellis fence up against
that old huge back wall.
You've heard of the Great Wall of China?
Well this is goin to be the great trellis fence
of Australia. (laughs)
It's gonna be pretty big, ha.
You might not be able to see it from space.
I'm not making that claim.
But, be pretty big.
Now, as far as the frame goes for the trellis fence,
I'm building it all out of recycled hardwood,
and I'm supporting the posts in these metal brackets.
This is a flat bar bracket, which is a much sturdier
bracket than the centre support brackets.
And I'm doing it for two reasons.
Reason number one, whenever you put timber, or wood,
or a wooden post, into the ground, over time,
I don't care what anybody says, it will rot.
Just ask any fencer.
And I don't wanna deal with that issue down the track,
hence, the posts are going to be supported
by these metal brackets.
It's much easier to put the posts into the ground,
but I think for longevity, these are the go.
And reason number two, which I've seen many times before,
is that when people attach a long trellis fence
to an existing fence, over time, when those plants grow big,
tall, and heavy, they tend to drag the old fence over,
which doesn't look that good.
Hence, which is why I'm going
for a free-standing trellis fence.
You know what I mean?
Good stuff.
Let's do this.
The first thing you're going to need is some mesh
for the plants to climb on, some old recycled hardwood
ceiling joists, bags of concrete, some high-wind post
stirrups, and handful of nuts and bolts.
And once you've gotten your materials sorted,
you'd better start digging those holes
for the metal post supports, because they're not going
to dig themselves, unfortunately.
And how's this for Murphy's Law?
Whenever you dig a hole in the back yard,
you always come across a very well positioned tree root
like this beast here, or a plumbing pipe, every single time.
It's amazing.
Oh well, looks like this tree root has a date
with the reciprocating saw.
Let's do it.
(upbeat music)
(saw running)
There you have it, the new Makita.
I'm as happy as Larry, love it.
Uh, come out, ya.
There she is.
Uncle Knackers, one.
Tree root, zero.
All right.
(upbeat music)
Now I've just gotta set these stirrups up
to the right height, and I want the bottom of the post
to be not far off ground level.
So I'm just working that out now,
and then I'll transfer the top of that over to here.
What I'm setting up are things called construction hurdles
that are used in the building set-out process,
which are really handy, as you'll see shortly.
We just nail this crossbar to these uprights,
and that'll provide a place for us
to attach our string line.
(power tool running)
So that's the top.
We put one down here as well.
Once they height for the post support and the distance
away from the fence has been determined,
we can then run out our string lines,
which will position the face of our post supports.
Now tying a correctly tensioned string line can be
a little tricky, so I'll leave a link below
to one of my string tying videos.
Make sure you check it out.
Now look at that, tight as a drum.
Beautiful.
With the holes dug, and the string lines in place,
it's time to mix up some concrete, dump it in the holes,
and set up those post supports for the trellis fence.
And it's really important that whenever
you're doing a free-standing structure,
that you take a little bit of care aligning the face
of those post supports to the string lines
and then plumb them up, from left to right,
just like like that, very nice.
(upbeat music)
G'day, folks.
Nice to see ya.
Now like I said before, I'm using recycled hardwood
for the posts, that I need to check out a little
so that they can slot into those post supports,
which just involves cutting a series of slots
close together, that I'll just simply chisel out
with the world's bluntest chisel.
I really need to get onto that.
And then prior to installing them into those post supports,
I'll give them a spray with a timber preservative
to give the exposed cuts a little more protection
from the elements.
Beautiful.
Now by now you might have noticed that, for the posts,
instead of going for one boring solid piece,
I'm using two lengths of recycled hardwood ceiling joist
that I sandwiched together with a block down the bottom,
middle, and top, that separates the two,
and makes the post a little more interesting.
Once you've screwed those separating blocks in,
grab yourself a spirit level, and begin plumbing
up the posts, starting with the one on each end
of the trellis fence.
And make sure you plumb and brace the post
before you bolt the post to the bracket.
Now, being born gifted with bionic hands can also speed
up the process, as you can see here.
With the two end posts braced and bolted in place,
run a string line between the two, making sure
that there's one string line running close to the top
of the post, and another running close to the bottom
of the post.
Then all you need to do is position the intermediate posts
in their brackets, line them up to the two string lines,
brace them, and then bolt them into their post brackets.
Too easy.
Once you work out how tall you want your lattice or trellis
fence to be, with the aid of a string line level,
like I'm using here, mark all your posts
to the string line, and cut them to length
with a circular saw.
And can I just say, that for more detailed instructions,
extra resources, more photos, and a list of tools
and materials that I used for this job, I'll leave a link
to my blog below, where you can check all that stuff out.
I want to frame my trellis or lattice mesh,
so out came my fantastic little table saw,
which I used to cut down those reclaimed
hardwood ceiling joists.
By cutting the joists in two, I was able
to get two sticks out of one, so it made the job
a little more economical.
I then just simply screwed the freshly cut hardwood
to the sides of the post, the same size as the steel mesh
that I was using.
Lovely.
As you can probably see, I have two framed sections
per opening, and to tie everything together,
I just simply attached the two frames
together using two blocks,
which I think also makes the structure
a little more interesting, as well
as serving a functional purpose.
Now make sure that if you intend to oil, paint,
or stain your fence, do it prior to attaching the mesh.
You'll thank me for that one.
And for the record, I'm just applying a couple of coats
of pure deck oil, which really makes the colour
of that hardwood pop.
We're getting close now.
All that's left to do is cut the mesh for the trellis fence
to size, and attach it to the wooden frames
that you've just made using, in my case,
a staple gun that fires stainless steel staples.
How easy is that?
So there it is, folks, the great trellis fence
of Australia, built from recycled materials all done.
Great tip, Knackers!
So whatta you reckon?
Not as big as the Great Wall of China, granted,
however, it only took me a couple of days
to build that thing, and took Emperor Qin
over 20 years with an army full of labourers,
so I didn't do too badly.
Alrighty, well I hope you enjoyed and found
that video useful, and as per usual, a big thumbs up
is always greatly appreciated, and if this is
your first time to my channel, please hit
that subscribe button for more handy tips.
Okay, after all that, I need a cup of tea.
Put some plants in the ground, and watch em grow.
So til next time, be safe, and I'm out of here.
Cheers.
(upbeat music)