writ­ten 4/13/2024, updat­ed 4/13/2024

Overview

Materials and Cost

Gar­den Tools, Soil, Rock, Rub­ber Mal­let, Gloves, Elbow Grease

• In com­par­i­son, Paver wall retain­ing blocks like, Mini Beltis 3 in. H x 8 in. W x 4 in. D Ash­land Con­crete Retain­ing Wall Block, need 96 total blocks to get 2 cours­es, but only sits 6in high. Would need 4 cours­es of pavers to reach a sim­i­lar 12″ height (com­pared to the 11″ of the Frame it All sys­tem).
• Cost: 96 blocks x $1.38 = $132.48 (6″ height)
• Cost: 192 blocks x $1.38 = $264.96 (12″ height)
• Cheap­er until you remem­ber you need paver base, lev­el­ing sand, and to get almost 200 retain­ing blocks to your house. Then to heft them to the gar­den
• Pros of paver wall blocks: Won’t break if hit­ting with lawn mow­ing equip­ment or oth­er rocks, bug and ani­mal proof, eas­i­er to work with uneven ter­rain, can be replaced eas­i­ly or moved/changed or expand­ed

Installation

Before and After

Preparation

Remov­ing Rebar: the orig­i­nal, rot­ten wood was held in with at least 15 pieces of rebar of vary­ing lengths. How do you remove rebar stuck in the ground? Turns out it’s real­ly easy: Vise Grip Pli­ers.

Lock it on, give it sev­er­al spins, then spin while pulling upwards. It real­ly is as sim­ple as that. Some pieces can be still stub­born, but just give it a few more spins, some back and forth, and nice steady pres­sure upwards.

Old pieces of wood and rebar removed, as well as some way­ward patio pavers. Then lay­ing out the com­pos­ite boards, and the bulk of the entire job: lev­el­ing, fix­ing the bed plot, remov­ing weeds and rocks, relo­cat­ing any exist­ing plants. Mus­cle and elbow grease, FTW

Assembling

Yay! Final­ly assem­bling the frame sys­tem, but don’t be fooled into ease! Now for the tech­ni­cal part.

There is one Stack­ing Brack­et kit for every 2 boards. Mak­ing sure to alter­nate the up and down ori­en­ta­tion of the brack­ets on either end, secure them to the boards using the lit­tle plug. Frame-it-All rec­om­mends either using your palms or a mal­let to push it in, but you’re guar­an­teed to want to use a mal­let unless your hands are made of some­thing hard­er than mine (kept get­ting my palm flesh stuck between the plug and the brack­et…) espe­cial­ly the more boards you’ll be secur­ing.

I’d rec­om­mend attach­ing brack­ets to just enough boards for the bot­tom lay­er for now because installing the cross­bars will mess things up if you try to do them all at once.

Fol­low­ing Frame-It-All’s instruc­tions, it’s time to dry fit the low­est lev­el togeth­er by plac­ing the stakes in upside down. This is a super impor­tant step that you do not want to skip because it allows you lev­el the pieces and see how it all lines up.

Sim­i­lar­ly, it’s extreme­ly impor­tant to dry fit the cross­beam sta­bi­liz­ing boards… I wish I’d paid more atten­tion to this part because my pieces end­ed up juu­u­ust a lit­tle too far in the final install and it was a pain to try and fix at the end (when you’re tired! Or at least I was with all of the lev­el­ing I had to do of the bed plot).

When you’re ready, it’s ham­mer time!

Even with it all ham­mered into the ground, this is the best time to dou­ble check your even­ness and lev­el­ing. You can still lift the stakes and fix things. I had a lot of work to do in that depart­ment

And now on to the tricky part. It’s time to assem­ble the rest of the boards and brack­ets, but first, you have to under­stand the brack­et ori­en­ta­tion of the cross­bars using the 4‑Way Brac­ing Brack­ets before assem­bling the rest of the brack­ets to the boards

Dry fit all the boards again, and using the 4‑Way Brac­ing Brack­et kits, fig­ure out the sta­bi­liz­ing cross­beam 3‑way ori­en­ta­tion. Attach the rest of the brack­ets to the boards after fig­ur­ing it out. If you mess up, it’s not a big deal. Just use a flat-head screw­driv­er in the lit­tle notch and twist out the plugs

Now to set up the 3‑way brac­ing brack­ets for the cross­bar. You need 1 Reg­u­lar Stack­ing Brack­et, 1 Mid 4‑Way Brac­ing Brack­et, and 1 Top 4‑Way Brac­ing Brack­et.

Ref­er­enc­ing the image above and ignor­ing the bot­tom lev­el, the left­most board has a Reg­u­lar Stack­ing Brack­et (bot­tom of stack), the cross­beam has a Mid 4‑Way Brac­ing Brack­et, and the right­most board has the Top 4‑Way Brac­ing Brack­et (top of stack).

**How­ev­er you end up ori­ent­ing them, make sure the top of the cross-board is flush with the rest of the boards**

When you’re ready, ham­mer them all in! Keep in mind that ham­mer­ing in the top might cause the bot­tom lay­er to sink into the ground a bit if you did­n’t use any paver/rock base. You can just lift up from the bot­tom and fix it.

Yay!

Fix any­thing you need to, and then cov­er up the holes with the Fin­ish­ing Caps!

Now, for some soil. I decid­ed to add some rock under­neath since the ground is basi­cal­ly all clay

ALL DONE. Sort of. I need some more soil.

Soil Quantity

In these images used 1.5cu. ft Gar­den Soil (Qty: 4) + 1 cu. ft Gar­den Soil (Qty: 4) + 0.5 cu. ft Riv­er Peb­bles (Qty: 2) = 11cu. ft total

I think I still need anoth­er 8 bags of the 1.5 cu. ft Gar­den Soil before I’m sat­is­fied, tak­ing into account set­tling from rain and weath­er. Mulch will go on top

Instruction Manual

NOTE: Step 4 is only for 3 and 4 tier lay­outs