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Simple yet elegant, this wire trellis set up between two pillars of an undercover area is a great screening option.
The project
Inspiration was taken from Bunnings How to make a wire espalier trellis tutorial.
It's important to note that I disagreed with the tutorial where it advises to use stainless steel cleats with screws, if you look at the tutorial and what it's asking you to use, they're not the same thing, so I opted to go with the wire eye straps, which were much closer to what is used in the video and images.
I didn't need to cut the treated Pine as it was already cut to size. Once home with everything I had, I spray painted the 3 sides that would be visible with the Dulux Flat Black Spray Paint. Once dry, I marked out the centre point of the timber and where I wanted it to be on the wall. I then evenly spaced out all the wire eye straps to go and drilled them into place. I then secured it to each wall at equal heights.
With the wire, I started from the top and worked my way down, once taught, I needed to attach a swage at one end and crimp it tight, the issue we found here was that a regular crimper was not strong enough for the job (which the tutorial advises you to get), save yourself the trouble and get a swaging tool instead, we purchased the Kincrome 350mm Swaging Tool with Wire Cutter and it did the job with ease.
Once the top was done, we worked out way down, ensuring each section was tight, before attaching a swage and crimping it at the bottom. We found difficulty cutting the wire, even with the wire cutter, and ended up using a chisel and a hammer to do it, but it doesn't bother us too much.
We purchased a large planter, two Passionfruit plants, some bamboo supports and some soil, which fit perfectly in the section. The images shows good progress of the Passionfruit plants. The humidity has been good for it, and we found it grew better once we began using some of our "Worm Farm Pee" to help it out.
Materials
We used the following:
- 2x 70mm x 35mm x 920mm treated Pine
- 1x Pinnacle 3.2mm x 30m 316 Marine Grade Stainless Steel Wire Rope
- 1x Taskmaster 3.2mm Copper Swage - 12 Pack
- 2x Taskmaster 5mm 316 Stainless Steel Wire Eye Strap - 12 Pack
- 1x Dulux 340g Duramax Flat Black Spray Paint
- Batten screws.
More inspiring screening projects
A wonderful idea to enliven any fence, Bunnings Workshop member Roy's simple training climbers to screen a fence project uses Star Jasmine and cable to train the plant to cover the area. Other community members have since been inspired to replicate the project to create living screening over their fences.
Check out our Top 10 most popular screening projects for more ideas for your home.
