Natural Style Garbage Shelter

Green plastic garbage container is a true eye sore standing alone next to the road.

Common solution is to go to the shop and buy some kind of shelter for that. Instead we choose to build it ourself to save some money and to get more personal touch.

For this garbage shelter you need:

• Tools
• Plenty of screws
• Wood 45x45mm and some 25x75 for the roof, floor and structure supports
• Post shoes for the foundation (4 pieces)
• Tree branches

We used some available scrap wood and only the frame pieces were bought so we got the shelter build with less than 100€.

Of course, the very first step was the planning, but since the only real planning was just to choose the size of the shelter we can start with the foundation.

Hammer the pole shoes to the ground in even square, each side being 85cm. Because this kind of hammering pole shoes are practically impossible to get straight (just one stone on the ground is enough) we don't even put that much effort on that. Just to make sure that everything is more or less straight and each of the pole shoes is hammered all the way down.

Add about half a meter long poles to the shoes and the basics of the foundation is ready.

Next we build the bottom frame on the top of the poles.

Here we must be sure that all the frame pieces are straight and lined nicely horizontally.

We added one more support beam to the middle of the structure and cut the corner poles to even height with a help of extra piece of wood.

Also at this point you can attach the poles to the pole shoes with correct sized wood bolt.

Since the foundation is ready, we start to build up the frame of the shelter.

At this point, we don't attach the vertical beams to the foundation poles, instead we attach them to the foundation strcture with one screw only. From the pictures you can also see that the foundation poles are really not straight at all. The vertical beams are attached to the corners of the foundation structure.

Support the beams with each other. Be very careful after this point because the pieces of wood are sticking out from the structure and it is easy to hit your head to them. Trust me - I know.

Now you need to adjust the vertical beams to be straght up in every direction. You might need to remove and re-attach some of the supporting beams many times.

As your shelter is shaping up, it is time to start to attach the real supporting beams. It is easiest to start from the bottom. Attach suitable length support beams outside of the vertical frame. Saw off the excess length.

You can now saw against the vertical beam so super accurate measures are not that important. The most important thing is that everything is in straight line. When the vertical beams are straight and supported, you can screw them with more screws to the foundation. They are going to carry quite a lot of weight so just one screw in each corner is not enough.

Continue by adding some more levels of horizontal support beams. We used three levels on the heights of 0cm, 80 cm and 150cm.

Find also the correct height and install the first roof supporting beams. We simply choose the front of the roof to be 190cm and the rear of the roof being on the height of 170cm and we attached the horizontal beams on these heights.

Choose also the width of the roof. We choose to make the roof 15cm wider than the foundation. At the front and rear the roof is about 20cm bigger than the foundation. This was not measured very accurately. We actually just placed one beam and when we were happy about it, we attached the rest of the roof structure according to the first beam.

Add a panels to the roof and to the floor. We left some empty space between each floor panel just to save some wood, but you can make solid wood floor as well.

The roof of course must be solid without any gaps between the panels.

At this point we don't make the roof any fancier than this. The plan is to later on make a moss roof for the garbage shelter, but that will be another instructable...

Add also some more support beams inside the vertical frame. In the second picture you see one of these angled support beams.

The shelter has now the structure ready. Now it is time to peel some branches.

You need them a lot. Luckily you don't need to be picky about them. Any brances will do.

The peeling of the branches will prevent bugs eating the wood. This can be done with normal knife. You don't need to worry about the straghtness of the brances, quite the opposite.

Now start to attach the peeled branches as the wall for the shelter. We used some long ones at the each corner to "hide" the square frame pieces. Play some wood-piece-tetris and be creative. There will be holes in the wall, but this just gives a character for your shelter.

When you are happy with your walls, you can cut of the excess pieces of the branches against the support beam. Leave the corner branches long. The bottom of the shelter will be camouflaged with the growing grass, so you don't need to cut the lower side of the branches to any certain lenght. Just make sure they don't touch the ground.

Place the trash can inside the shelter and you are ready.

We don't do any kind of painting for the wood. The idea is to let the structure age in the sun and rain. It will get in couple of years nice gray tone and it will practically disappear in the forest.

You can of course use wood oil or paint if you wish.

Also if you wish, you can add door to your shelter.

The only thing what is needed at this point would be a ramp to easily move the trash can out and in to the shelter. You can use anything you want from simple planks to a concrete cast ramp, but the ramp building is now up to you.

Now your ugly trash can is hidden from the sight and you can relax and enjoy birds singing and mosquitoes stinging.