Projects: DIY Pergola

How hard can that be to do it yourself? The idea: a wood pergola. Quotes to have one built started at AUD$5000 (1997). No way - I could build one for $AUD2k easy!

Well that was my first call. Okay, it only cost me around $AUD2.5k (1997) but now I know why they put a big price tag on labour...

But don't be put off - what you see here was a lot of fun. Mates from everywhere offer assistance (it's a built-in blokey thing. Ug. Big bit of wood. Ug. Bolt. Ug ug. You get the idea, it's just good back breaking fun).

So as long as you are organised - have all the wood, have ladders, bolts, cartons of beer... you'll find anyone will offer to help.

All parts get spray painted *before* construction begins...

Paint all parts ON THE GROUND; beg, borrow or buy a spray gun to paint it with. DO NOT paint with a brush unless you are some sort of masochist, and I'm talking a serious masochist. You can buy "splat guns", that is, airless paint guns, for around $AUD50 (2011).

Note here that I'd already put the stirrups in the ground. 450mm*300*300 are the local regs for the footings - I did everything to local regs. Armed with a wheelbarrow, a couple of bags of cement and plenty of blue metal. Check the cement bag for mixing quantites, I went a fairly stiff mix being close to the coast.

Get your local council approval. It'll cost you a few bucks but it pays to eliminate potential heartache. I had only just applied for approval at this stage. Oops. Lucky it was approved hey! Well, I specified it all to the councils regulations before I drew up the plans so you'd want to hope so.

Go to town on string lines. String lines on the ground, string lines in the air, and measure measure measure. Distances, angles, EVERYTHING... As they say, 'measure twice cut once'.

This is actually 2 weekends worth of work. I bought a circular saw, they are cheap and constantly getting cheaper so don't muck around. Note that the standard 184mm blade will not cut through a 100mx100m post - you'll have to turn it over and cut through the other side.

Posts bolted into the stirrups, beams bolted between the posts. Posts are notched to accept the beams, and the beams join at each post.

In the roof I installed rafter bolts. Being a tin roof I unscrewed the first few row of tek screw so I could lift up the bottom of the sheets just enough to bolt them to every rafter. Overkill, every second would be enough. A rafter bolt is a plate of metal with a length of thread welded to it that you attach to the side of a rafter, and the threaded rod pops out through the fascia. Your local hardware guy will have them.

The posts have 2xM12 bolts on the bottom, and 2xM12's for each beam. Definitions: Post is the bit coming up from the ground (100mm*100mm). Beam is the bits joining the posts together (200mm*50mm). Rafters are the bits yet to come (150mm*50mm). Battens are the skinny bits that you hold the roofing material down with (50mm*37mm).

Hips completed.

All the wood I used was rough sawn jarrah and karri, Australian hardwoods. Pretty rare these days, in fact if I was to ever build another pergola it would be seasoned, treated and finished Pinus Radiata. In todays environ-mentally conscious world Pinus Radiata is *the* renewable source of structural wood (at least here in Western Australia), what's more being finished not rough sawn means it is really straight and a pleasure to paint. Being a softwood though the sizes would be bigger for the same spans (refer to the spec sheets available for the product you are using).

I hadn't taken a picture in ages. Here you can see the finished structure. How does it get together like this?

BBQ project under construction. Who says you should finish one project before moving to the next? ;)

In this picture you can see another project taking shape - the BBQ...

Well that is the main structure finished. All that is left is battens, and roof sheeting. I bought tin sheet and 'opal' tinted polycarbonate (product name "Laserlite") from my local Stratco. The tin sheet was about $AUD6 (1998) per linear meter, and the polycarb $AUD12.50 (1998).

Paving & BBQ complete under lights at night.

A night time shot - Nice fairy lights, some decent spotlights for the BBQ and Wok - give it an inviting look. However certainly makes the dust show up...

Had some chaps come around and do the paving. These match our driveway, they are 190x 190x 60mm cement 'blokpave' pavers. On the driveway we sealed them with an acrilic lacquer designed for cement. I helps keep the colour and stops the dirt and oil from staining. I didn't do it out the back, firstly because it doesn't have cars driving over it, and because I'd need about 2 10L cans of it at about 100 bucks a pop. Do you think I'm getting cheap and nasty or just slack?

Pegola before the roof project begins.

The missus went out and bought this be-yewtiful outdoor setting, oiled jarrah and I reckon it looks great. Cost a bit, so not much more on the construction front...

With the hot weather coming we decided it was time for some roof sheeting. The plan was:

I screwed the battons on rather than nailing as when the battens start to warp (which of course they will) they wont pull a screw out, but they would pull out a nail. There are these useful screws, not suprisingly call "batten screws" which do the job just nicely.

The battens are 75mm*35mm jarrah. Putting up tin is not as easy as it sounds (suprisingly), but I can suggest this:

During the installation of the roof sheeting.
Looking underneath at the finished roofsheeting - tin is on the east side.

So what pearls of wisdom have been gleaned from this exercise?

The finished product, with lattice added to nice effect and some protection from the wind.