Winter is coming. Well… maybe its only April, but several of my plants had a rough time last winter, and I had the idea this morning to do something about that. Also, I’ve got plans for a crop of perspective bonsai that I will need a lot of space for. The build is simple, consisting of twenty-two (22) five foot two by fours and six (6) 23-1/2″ (approximate) two by fours. Living in an apartment, I restricted the project to not involve any wood cuts at home, so I selected eleven (11) twelve foot long two by fours and had the guys at Lowe’s cut the pieces (at 25 cents a cut and two free, the work came out to about five bucks). All of the colums and platform pieces are five foot long and only the shelf support pieces are short. Screws required are about a pound of three and a half inch exterior wood screws (star head always hold the best) and maybe a quarter pound of two and inch crews of the same type. The lights are 48″ shop light fixture with regular T8 bulbs (I may get proper grow bulbs eventually), and those are plugged into a heavy duty electromechanical appliance timer.
The end result is satisfactory for a day project for a guy with minimal carpentry skills. It’s overly strong, overly heavy, and not as true square as I’d like, but its exactly what I needed.
