Cedar Raised Beds: I'm finally posting about those uber cheap ones I made

I've been meaning to post about the cedar beds I made out of those crazy cheap cedar fence pickets. I would have built them and posted about it sooner, but I had to rip some of the boards to create the trim pieces. The crazy cheap person in me wasn't willing to buy a table saw just yet and it took me a week or so to sucker someone into letting me use theirs.

 It only took me two weeks to get them done including the delay, and a whole week to take pictures and post. In my defense it's been rather grey and gloomy out and I wanted to wait for a slightly sunnier day when the flash didn't go off outside in the afternoon.

I built them according to Ana White's instructions except I made them bigger (4'x8'). Since my boards were 5' long I couldn't span the entire length and went with a brickwork style overlap so there wasn't one seam in the center or a weird off-center seam. It would look like this without the trim (if it would stay together).
I used trim to cover the joints and hold the horizontal boards together. I added purely decorative ones in the center of the ends to keep the trim spacing consistent. Since my boards were actually 5/8"x6" I ripped the trim pieces to 1 1/2" and the beds are 12" high. Cutting the boards from 5' to 4' meant the leftovers were already the perfect length for the trim pieces.

Sadly, I haven't gotten a load of compost to fill them in yet so they're barren at the moment, but I'll try to update once there are actual plants in them. So far I'm quite satisfied with myself. I spent $30 on 44 5' pickets and another $15 or so on exterior wood glue and outdoor screws so they ended up around $15 a piece. I'm thrilled with that for a 4'x8' bed. I eventually want a total of 12, but three is a pretty serious amount of bed making in my book.

My husband may ban me from reading The Lettered Cottage on Tuesday.

Layla and Kevin had this great idea to have a how-to linky party on Tuesday called How To's Day.

Awesome, right?

Not if you're concerned about the fact that your wife has a bit of an issue with finishing projects, but is super good about starting them.

Guess whose wife just happens to have that issue?

My husband's.

He has every right to recognize this behavioral flaw and request that I finish projects before I move on to new ones so that our house doesn't become a scrap yard of unfulfilled craftiness. I'm pretty sure as soon as he knows about this linky party thing he will recognize what an imminent risk it poses to my project completion stats.

Unfortunately for him, I made some great finds for myself as well as some special friends I just had to forward ideas to. However, I was able to whittle down over 250 how to's to just 3 I actually want to take on as projects.

I think that's pretty impressive.

He might not.

He might also hate them.

Let's hope he doesn't.

First up, remake/do the wreath for the door so we have one, but it's not so girly (like the bad kind of girly, not the powerful awesome kind of girly). I'm thinking something in the range of Layla's spring wreath or Pretty Handy Girl's paper flower spring wreath.

Next, make several of Sweet Little Smoothie's Elegant Hydrangea Eggs. I LOVE them. Somehow I'm thinking my husband may not.

This one requires possession of a hot glue gun so it may not happen for a while, but Easter season is only so long so it may just be a dream.Or maybe I'll buy eggs on clearance after Easter and just not observe the end of the traditional season.

This one is an ongoing search type project. Finding and painting a cloche à la Alexis Brooke Lane. She sells them and other fabulous things on Etsy.

See. That's not so bad. Just three little additional, maybe thinking about doing sometime, might not ever even start projects.

I'm wearing my favorite shirt under it too.

You know those mornings when you drink two glasses of water, chug some coffee, eat some eggs and have a piece of fruit all in the hopes that hydration, caffeine, protein, or sugar will make you feel less exhausted before giving up and putting on a hoodie to ride out the day?

I'm  having one.