The pergola was 3 weekends in the making. It ended up costing around $400 for pressure treated lumber. Cedar would have been around $1200, which was more than we wanted to spend. It was a pretty easy build because I just had to follow the plans I purchased from Rockler, but dealing with the size of the lumber was a bit challenging, and there was quite a bit of jig saw cutting, which took while to do. I set the posts myself while Collette was out of town, and if you look carefully they are not perfectly plumb. Overall we're very pleased with it, and can't wait to get it stained and get the vines that are now growing up the side of the garage to grow up and over the pergola.
If you were wondering what happened to Summer Project #2, well, you can see it in the corner of these pictures. It was a back breaking day of laying sod. I greatly underestimated how hard it would be. I hadn't laid sod since my days working on the Marriott golf course freshman year of college. I was still sore 4 days after laying the sod.
Posted on: Sunday, June 28, 2009