The pergola

Finally, a post about the pergola! This project has been in our heads for years - well before the girls were born we went to a party where our friends had one and we thought it would be perfect for our sweltering concrete backyard. The project seemed so daunting that we delayed and delayed until finally we bit the bullet.

 

First, we had to take down the horrible basketball hoop, which was not bolted to anything. Strange. We used that polyurethane foam to fill the holes from the bolts and patch the cracks in the garage facade.

 

 

Here is Tomu painting over the evidence.

 

Better! We bolted a 2/4 to the front of the garage with lag bolts.

 

Then the scariest part of the project, drilling into the concrete with a hammer drill!

 

We needed to do that to anchor these brackets for the 4x4 uprights.

 

Uprights in!

 

Getting these headers up was hard. They are 2x8x20 feet long, and heavy, and slightly warped. We used some 2x4s as ledges (you can see them on the middle post). We rested the beams on them, clamped a lot, and used carriage bolts to secure the whole thing. (Plus there's Rusty, the day before his adventure!)

 

Then we put up the cross beams using hurricane ties.

 

Lookin' good!

 

That was all we could get done the first day. You can see the giant 4x4s we are using to brace the structure until we could get all the cross beams installed. This is when you would install the small slats on a normal pergola, but we decided to use shade cloth instead. We finished it on the 4th of July!

Here's what our tool table looked like!

 

Eye bolts for one end of the cable, and screw eyes on the garage side.

 

Then we strung the stainless steel cable with the help of turnbuckles.

 

Look, proof that I did something! Another thing you notice in this photo is the beam that comes off the apex of the garage. My brother in law (the graphic designer) pointed it out and how he liked the continuity with the beams on the pergola structure. I didn't notice this until he mentioned it but now the fact that the garage beam doesn't have an angle cut out of it is going to bother me :)

 

Turnbuckles!!

Of course the shade cloth came with a raw edge so I had to whip out the machine. Like my farmer's tan?

 

 Shade cloth going up! Look at the awesome shadow it's already making on the ground. It blocks 90% of the UV light. Here you can also see the 45 degree angle supports we put in. Those were probably the biggest pain of the whole project (and that also explains why I don't have any photos of the process!)

 

Those black clips slide along the cables so you can open and close the cloth. Useful in windy weather, so we can prevent undue strain on the garage and pergola structure.

 

Everything hung and job done! In the future we may build some planter boxes around the base of some of the uprights and connect them with benches. But I did plan the space between the uprights to be about as wide as a parking spot, if we ever wanted to use it as a carport.

 

The pergola makes a cameo during the party. It was a big hit! 

 

I don't know why we waited to build it. It is so great and it transforms the backyard. It makes me want to spend time out there! We got more than one half joking request to build them for friends, but I think we're done with pergolas for now :)