Garden Rooms

What you need:

  • Flat board (wooden surface wood be good)
  • X1 Polystyrene board (1.2m x 1m)
  • X1 Roofing screw/nail
  • Pencil
  • Small hammer
  • Building string
  • Jigsaw
  • Angle grinder
  • A round shape (e g: plastic bowl)
  • 8 gauge wire
  • Binding wire
  • 50mm PVC pipe (short piece)
  • 1 bucket fine river sand
  • ½ bucket cement
  • ¼ bucket 12mm building stone
  • Water
  • Steel trowel
  • X3 75mm x 650mm downpipe
  • X3 75mm x 1050mm downpipe
  • X4 concrete blocks
  • X6 10mm re-enforcing bars
  • Rockset

What to do:

  1. Place the polystyrene board on a flat wooden surface.
  2. Find the centre of the polystyrene board and the push through the roofing screw/nail to mark it. Use a small hammer to knock the screw/nail down. Make sure it goes into the flat wooden surface that you are working on so that it makes a mark.
  3. Measure the radius of the tabletop: 415mm (or what ever size that you would like to create but make sure that you are able to draw a full circle on the polystyrene board).
  4. Create a small loop on the one end of the building string and put it over the top of the roofing screw/nail. Make another small loop on the other end of the string and insert a pencil (or anything that  are using to draw) into to it
  5. Draw a complete circle with the pencil (that is attached on to the string) on the poly board.
  6. Remove the string from the nail, then take out the screw/nail. Use a Jigsaw to cut out the circle shape.
  7. The big poly board with a circle cavity will form the table-top mould. Place this piece in the exact place
  8. Take the circle polystyrene shape that you’ve cut, place on the flat wooden surface.
  9. Decide on what size seat you want and then take a circular shape (could be anything) of that size and use a pencil to draw out on the polystyrene. For the size table we are making – you are going to need three chairs. Use the Jigsaw to cut out three of these from the polystyrene. The circle poly board with three circle cut out will be the seats mould.
  10. Next: prepare the re-enforcement for both moulds. For the table re-enforcement: Use 8 gauge (that is flexible & bendable) wire to create 2 different sized circles (1 big, 1 small). The bigger circle will be the outer that needs to be at least 5cm smaller than the circle cavity. The smaller wire circle will need to fit snugly around the centre of the cavity. You need to join the 2 circles with a appropriate size wire that will keep the distance them as per placing. You will however need to attach the one side of the connecting wire using a tacking wire to the big circle and the smaller circle.  You will probably need 4 of these joints.
  11. For the seats re-enforcements: Use 8 gauge wire to make 3 circles that will fit in the cavities for the seats. Make sure that the gauge has room, to prevent it from being in there too tightly.
  12. Mix 1 bucket of fine river sand, ½ bucket cement and ¼ bucket of 12mm building stone with enough water to form a pourable runny consistency. In order to fill in both the table and seats moulds, you will have to mix a second load of concrete using exactly the same ratios as mentioned above.
  13. Take the short 50mm PVC pipe – drill holes on it and place it in the centre of the table mould (make sure it is placed around the nail mark you created earlier on the wooden surface).
  14. Pour in small amount of concrete into the table mould. Use a steel trowel to spread it on the entire circle to create a small base layer.
  15. Take the prepared table top re-enforcing and pop on top of the concrete base layer and then continue to fill in the mould with concrete (working it with the steel trowel as you go along) and level it up once the cavity is full. Smooth down the top with a steel trowel.
  16. Then proceed to put a small amount of the concrete mixture into the seat mould to create base layers before putting in the prepared seats, re-enforcing the cavities with more concrete. Level the top of seat and use a steel trowel to create a smooth finish
  17. Leave both moulds on the flat wooden surface to dry.
  18. Next: you need to make the legs for both the table and chairs, you will need downpipes (normally used for gutters):
    • For the table:             x3 downpipes: 75mm x 650mm 
    • For the chairs:          x3 downpipes: 75mm x 1050mm
  19. Use a releasing agent to spray into all the pipes.
  20. Create a small enclosure with concrete blocks then place all the downpipes inside and tie them all together with a binding wire.
  21. Using the same concrete mix used earlier, pour a small amount of it in each pipe to create a base layer. Insert a 10mm re-enforcing bar in each pipe (this bar needs to be 10mm shorter that the down pipe).
  22. Continue to fill up all the pipe moulds with concrete and level the tops using a steel trowel. Leave moulds to dry.
  23. When all moulds are completely dry, remove table top (take out the 50mm PVC pipe first) and seats from the polystyrene. To take out the legs from the downpipe moulds: Use an angle grinder to cut the pipe moulds from the top to bottom so that you are able to slide the legs out.
  24. Find a place in the garden for the table. Dig 6 holes – 3 for the table and 3 for the chairs.
  25. Pour in a little bit of concrete into the holes, then put in about 150mm of each leg into each hole and then fill up the holes to the top with concrete
  26. To attach the table top and seat to the legs: mix a little bit of Rockset to form a paste and apply this onto the top of the all legs before placing the table top and seats.
  27. Let the table set before using it.

 

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