Wooden seat top to a brick built seat, advise required pls?

[k2sally]

Hi woodworkers,

I am looking for advise on construction of a wooden seat to a brick built raised box.

There will be a box built from house bricks of 6 courses high.
It will be located between the patio and grass of the garden.
It's 1m wide and about 2.4m long.
It's use is to lounge on, divide the garden, and also store general items within, like the watering can, odd hand fork, bit of compost and so on.

I want advise on how to construct the seat to go on top.

What profile (size) of hard wood should I use? (as its to be used outside in the garden).
What wood would be best to use: Oak, Douglas fir or other?
I want the wood to run along the length of the seat as that's the face it will be seen from the house and I dont want 'end-on' showing.
I am unsure as to how the lengths of timber will be fixed together, from underneath or in a frame or so, any good ideas?
I am also unsure as to what sort of wood arrangement should be inside / on top of the brick structure for fastening?

I would like the seat top to be hinged at the rear, I was thinking of tee hinges?

Really I have a great long list of requirements and 'no bloody idea' how best to construct it, just a picture of the finished seat in my head.

So, if you have knowledge you would not mind sharing I would very much appreciate.

Many thanks in advance, k2sally.

 

[Kev]

Have made something slightly similar before for a swimming pool which had a raised brick wall around the outside of it. From memory we used Balau which is good for external use (think they use it for external decking). Pig to work with though but did look nice when finished. For that they specified that the wood sit on cross battens of the same material which were secured to the top of the brickwork and then the boards were screwed and plugged to the battens. It was quite wide so we splined the boards together using a marine resin (sorry cant remember what it was called).

Having it raised slightly above the brickwork gave it a nice look in my opinion. Depending on the colour you are going for you could could use Iroko or Oak I guess. Others will have better knowledge on this I'm sure.

Anyway don't know if that helps but thought would add to two penneth!

kev