Working on the Back Yard - Part 9 of X

Every week as I get ready to write this blog, I sit down and think, "okay, what's happened lately?  Did I have a race?  Did someone visit?  Did we do something cool?  Did we go somewhere?"  If the answer to all of those questions is "no," then I fall back to my old filler standby, yet another post about the yard.  It's time for Part 9!

Since it's been a while since Part 8 (last October - dang!  We've been doing stuff since then!), here's a quick recap: we got cement!  Woo hoo!

About a month after Coastline came and poured us our patio in the back yard, we found a weekend where we weren't doing any running or traveling and the weather would be nice (one big advantage of SoCal over Phoenix is that you can do outdoor projects in the summertime without dying of heatstroke - winning!) and in mid-June, we started working on building ourselves a pergola.  As you might imagine if you've ever met him, Chris had been doing all sorts of research on how to build a pergola, what wood to use, how tall it should be, where we could buy it, and so on and so forth.  We ended up going to Ganahl Lumber one afternoon and placing a delivery order for the next weekend for several very large pieces of wood - four 10 foot 6x6s (I think - Chris can correct me) would serve as our main vertical supports, and we'd also have two 20 foot 4x6s for our larger spans as well as four slightly shorter 4x6s for the shorter sides (again, please don't build your own pergola based on these figures, as they may very well be wrong - I'm not very spatially intelligent plus this happened almost one full year ago.  I accept zero responsibility here).

Anywhoo, Saturday morning dawned, and bright and early, the Ganahl truck was here with our new treasures. As an aside, Ganahl is an amazing lumber store, with way more selection at much better prices than HD or Lowe's.  Would recommend!

As you can tell, the truck was so large

that it couldn't be captured in one picture.

Lots of wood here.

Chris and I trucked the beams into the back yard, where we got some good use out of our new cement breezeway, using it to paint the beams with wood sealant before we attempted putting them in place.

Beam-curing time!

Chris also took this opportunity to take just a few inches off the ends of some of the beams, to ensure they were all equal and level.

As a reminder, when the guys from Coastline poured the patio, we asked them to sink footers for the pergola in for us, which looked like this:

Come to this blog for the stories,

stay for the riveting photojournalism.

It was now time for the tricky bit (well, the first tricky bit) - getting each ten foot beam vertically situated and then secured into each footer with just the two of us without either of us (or the dog - I'm pretty sure we locked her in the house for this part) becoming flattened in the process.  As you might imagine, we don't have photos of the hoisting, as it kept us quite busy, but everything went off as well as could be expected.  We got all the beams in place without any smushed fingers or feet, which is a major win in this household.

POWER TOOLS!

Oops, missed a spot with the sealant.

I fix.

All finished with the posts:

By this point, we were pretty tuckered, so we packed it in for the day and headed inside to clean up and have an adult beverage to celebrate our progress.  The next morning, we were back at it again, this time, handing the cross-beams.  Again, no pictures from the actual hoisting, as I recall it being really freaking hard with just two people, particularly when it came to the long, twenty-foot spanners.

Making sure all bolts 

are nice and tight.

With the longer spans done, it was time to put up the shorter beams:

Using the patented,

"whatever, just rest it on the roof" method.

All support spans - done!

I worked on more staining while Chris headed back to HD/Lowe's for something we'd inevitably forgotten to buy earlier/ran out of/had no idea we would need (said everyone who has ever done a home project).  

Upon his return, Chris cut the ends of the spanners to enhance their appeal, and we were pretty much done for the weekend:

Ooh, fancy!

Supervising, as always.

The next weekend, it was back to Ganahl with our own truck this time, to purchase a cubic butt-ton of ten-foot slats, which would serve as part of the shade portion of the pergola.  Before we put them up there, it was time to seal!

Sealing selfie!

Slats drying in the sun.

I call this, "Pergola, in Progress,

With Dog."

When the slats were dry (this may have been the next morning), we popped them up onto the long support beams, using our handy-dandy nail gun (we have SO many power tools now, you guys):

OMG, are you done taking pictures?

Voila!

...and that's pretty much what the pergola looks like today (with a few changes, which might be in an upcoming blog, depending on how sparse the content stays around here)!  We still have plans to add shade fabric to the top, since, as you can see, the slats only provide so much shade, and it's a little warm in the summer morning hours to really enjoy being out there on the porch.  Overall, though, we're happy with it, and we're proud that we did the whole thing ourselves, to be honest.  In telling his Mom about it, I heard Chris having the following exchange: 

"Yeah, Mom, we built a pergola in our back yard." 

[Mom talking]

"No, we built a pergola."

[Mom talking]

"No, Mom, we didn't hire someone.  We built it ourselves."

So there.

Later!

Amy