Against "One-Hour" Disposable Projects
Spend ten minutes searching online for DIY outdoor furniture and you will find hundreds of projects stapled together from damp pallet slats, painted with indoor chalk paint, and photographed in studio sunlight before a single drop of rain has touched them. Six months later, those builds are bowed, mossy, and headed for the municipal skip.
Part Curious Button started in a narrow 4.5-metre courtyard behind an old foundry lane in Stroud, Gloucestershire. We wanted outdoor furniture that respected small domestic footprints, used standard timber merchant stock sizes without wasteful ripping, and relied on time-tested carpentry principles—air gaps, sacrificial feet, shedding bevels, and stainless fixings.
Our Four Yard-Testing Rules
- Ordinary Tools Only: Every build on partcuriousbutton.garden can be completed on two folding sawhorses with a hand saw or circular saw, a drill/driver, a 38mm bevel-edge chisel, and bar clamps. No stationary spindle moulders or industrial thickness planers required.
- Standard Merchant Sections: We design around timber sizes you can actually carry through a terraced house hallway or fit onto a hatchback roof rack—primarily 45×95mm C24 scantlings, 22×150mm boards, and 16×120mm shiplap.
- Zero Blind Water Traps: If rainwater can enter a joint, it must be able to drain out the bottom or evaporate through an open ventilation gap within two hours of the rain stopping.
- Repairable By Design: High-wear components—such as bottom planter slats or nylon leg glides—are screwed rather than glued so a single weathered board can be swapped out in ten minutes ten years from now.
Get Involved
Whether you are building your first courtyard bench or adapting our zinc-topped potting locker to fit beside an awkward drainpipe, we welcome field reports and dimension questions via our maker contact page.