Cedar screening - I've hit a problem, can anyone help?

[EdF_uk]

Hi everyone,

I'm ticking along with the garden landscaping and now starting to make up the cedar panels for the screen/pergola thing (See sketchup image)....

I used a number of 150x150mm oak posts and made a frame that sits on the insides of the posts (See photo). The cedar battens are 44mm wide and with a 6mm gap between successive battens the planned height of each screen is 1794mm. I therefore made the frame 1794mm tall.

I was toying with how I would make the screens and in the end I wanted a modular design so that I could remove the panels easily if I need to do maintenance on the fence etc, otherwise I could have installed each batten directly to the frame insert. Initially I was going to make each screen like this:
Option 1 -

. Here the vertical battens are marked with a tape measure where each horizontal batten should go and then the battens are positioned by eye on the marks before being screwed. This would ensure that the screen was perfectly the right height at the expense of getting an absolutely identical gap size. After chatting with my wife (not blaming her!) we discussed another method:
Option 2 -whereby I used a 6mm spacer to lay the battens one by one and build it up that way. I opted for this method in the end to ensure a consistent gap size. However.....due to tolerances in the batten sizes etc the final panel size has come out at 1740mm for one panel and 1750mm for another. I kind of new this was going to happen so not sure why I opted for it. Anyway, the panels look great and the gap size is consistent but they are not as designed and will potentially all be different sizes. Given that I have 150mm Oak posts between the panels I think I could still use the panels as the difference is 10mm but I would have to modify the frame insert, which is doable. This could potentially be different for every screen and something inside of me doesn't like it, it'll basically be a bodge and rely on the viewer not noticing the difference in size of panel.

I'm now toying with the idea of going back to option where I measure where each batten should be then manually place them at each location which will ensure the panel is the correct size. I should be able to reuse all the battens as everything is screwed from behind so you wont see any existing holes etc.

Any recommendations/comments?

Ed

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

You already know the answer.

 

[EdF_uk]

I do but after a long think I’m actually I’m going to stick with Option 1. It will pain me for a few weeks but I’ll get over it. I can shorten the frames to accommodate the shortest screen and then just allow the larger ones to hang over by up to 10mm. No big deal.

No one (except me!) will
Notice the difference at the bottom.

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

Yep, you'll always notice, I stuck some external handrails up, all the uprights are perfectly vertical except for one which nobody would ever notice unless it was pointed out, it bugs me every time I see it.