Wooden DIY Privacy Screens

I've really got a large stash of wooden bed slats! You will recall I've mentioned that there's a furniture shop near my place that often throws out stuff like this:

 (Whyyyyyy?)

So I decided I'd make some privacy screens, to be placed on our porch, between my neighbour's house and ours.  Don't ask why because it involves dead plants, aquariums and fish ponds with fishless murky, green water, glass chips, 672 cigarette butts (no, I didn't count), a dead rat, dog poop... 

My husband, bless-his-heart, helped me with making these.

First, we had to pull out all the slats as the gaps between them were too big. That's like 672 nails to be yanked out (no, I didn't count).

Next, we re-arranged them closer together with unevenly-spaced gaps, and nailed them down.

 The base was also made with wooden slats.  Each base had four castors (I'm in love with castors - the first time I used them was on a trolley here:

 http://tree-shades.blogspot.com/2012/05/tongue-twisting-teal-tea-trolley.html)

 I wanted to be able to roll the screens around because I had exciting ideas of the many ways the screens could be used.

See the base turned over, with the four castors, up there? :)

Gee, all you need to do is attach a large basket on that and you could wheel grandkids around and no-I-am-not-hinting-for-any-sigh.

 We then made props at the back to hold up the screens.

We made four of these screens.

Loved them!  At this point I should have left them in their au naturel glory, but no... ol' Itchy Hands here had to go and paint them.

I painted them a very pale grey as I was afraid white would be blinding in the sun.

 

I sanded them to give them a worn, rustic look, a look I'm realising I love more and more.  Kinda like finding the genre of music you want to produce and finally settling on one (does one need to?) but that's another story.

A coat of polyurethane to protect them, and we were done.  I love them!  Now comes the time I play around with them.....I could add plants on the base -

I

I could poke plants through the gaps, just for decoration...

I could hang pop bottles filled with this crazy thorny plant growing in the wild (I loved the look of the berries) - which are probably poisonous, seeing how it loudly declares come-near-me-or-else.

I could think of so many ways to decorate the screens!

...and then...
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I get a message from church asking if I could help with some decoration for Father's Day.  So with the help of my friend LSY, we came up with this (thanks JDP, for the photo):
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I knew those screens would come in handy... :)