Pergola!

Uh, almost.

Other than the fact that just about every step of this project takes twice as long as I expect it to, we got through last weekend without any major issues. That means: More pics, less talk.

The one woman staining crew:

The one woman post trimming crew:

If you’re wondering, that’s the “I really don’t want to fall off this ladder and break my neck” face that I’m making. Attractive, I know, but hey it worked. Another way I assured myself I’d stay put on the top of that ladder is the luggage strap you see slung over my right shoulder. When I was using the other saw I would swing it around the post and clip it to my belt loops which gave me a little stability. Mark the Neighbor said I looked like a lumberjack. Ha. Ha.

It took almost all of Saturday to get those posts trimmed down and about half of the roof 2×6’s stained…. here’s a three-piece mock-up of the roof:

Sunday I started on the first piece of lattice…

(That took about four hours, mostly due to crappy battery life on my power tools, and the fact that I had to extend that lattice –which only comes in 8ft sections– to ten feet. Can’t even tell, can ya?)

This project was supervised by this little guy. He was about as big as the palm of my hand:

Moms and I stained that lattice piece which, because it was lattice, took about two and a half hours. Plus we finished all of these:

Getting the lattice piece into place wasn’t easy AT ALL but a strategically placed 2X4 helped us leverage the thing up and hold it into place. One of the crappy things about being a girl (and not having an extra 100 lbs packed on me)  is that it’s hard to stand on a ladder and get enough leverage to get the wood screws in. About  a third of the time I end up stripping the screw, and I haven’t found any good work-around for this.  Usually I try to screw everything in on the ground so that I can lean all of my weight onto it.

Despite all of that, though…

Looks slightly better than my drawing, no?

JUMP TO PART VII of The Pergoal Saga- Not as Badass As I Would Like…