Compost bin Part I

Time to do some catching up, so I'll start with the latest.

One of the things I've wanted to do since buying my house was to have a compost bin. I thought about buying one over the years. There's plenty to choose from, like ones that make it easy to turn the compost and others that make it convenient to get to the finished compost. But those are kind of expensive.

So some time ago, I found a gardening blog whose owner wrote about making a compost bin from wooden shipping pallets. Pallets are pretty easy to find; just check with any warehouse-type business. They might even give you what you need for free. Or there's always dumpster diving, heh.

I picked up these pallets from where I work:


I decided to start on it tonight, but got kind of a late start, so didn't get too much done.

I first did a dry fit to figure out just how would be the best way to position them. Positioning them with the slats running vertical put the bin at a good height for me, and I turned them so the grass clippings and other things I'll put in there are less likely to get caught in the middle. I decided the biggest, heaviest one would make the best one for the back of the bin:


It's a bit wider than the one I wanted to use for the door, so I think it will actually help make a good fit for the door.


Then I marked how the L-brackets should fit. I was going to attach them to the back piece first, move it to where I want it, then attach the sides, but I thought it would actually work better to attach the brackets to the side pieces first, because then I'll definitely have the L-brackets attached to the frames of all the pieces, rather than just the slats of the sides.



The I predrilled the holes for the screws. I actually didn't pre-drill the holes deep enough and broke the the head off the first screw I tried to drill in. Oops. But it'll hold. It's not like I'm building a house or anything.



So after redrilling the other holes a bit deeper, I attached the L-brackets with screws.

And there's one side all done.

Tomorrow night I'll attach the L-brackets to the other side piece, and attach the hinges to one side piece. We'll see if I finish putting the whole thing together tomorrow. It depends on what else I need to get done.