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23Feb

Arbors over Gates Turn Backyards into Hidden Sanctuaries

Arbors over gates separate your home sanctuary from the busy modern world. When I was in the Marines, a crimson signpost of two upright columns topped with a crossbar was a frequent sight. Usually, the unit’s sign and the names of its officers and senior non-commissioned officers swung from chains below the crossbar. It wasn’t until I was stationed in Okinawa that I learned where this came from. It’s called a torii, and it’s a type of gate used to mark the entrance to Shinto shrines in Japan. The military had taken a liking to the look of these and had...

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16Feb

Garden Arbors with Trellises Provide Shade, Privacy, and a Focal Point

Garden arbors with trellises can define areas in a yard as well as provide privacy. One of the best features a house can have is a stately old tree in the yard. Trees provide shade for a home, but more importantly, they shade the yard on a hot summer day and make it a joy to be outside. However, many of my friends have seen their stately old oaks, maples, and other trees get struck by lightning, contract diseases from unhygienic tree cutters, or just expire from any number of the factors that affect centenarians. My friends, of course, plant new trees...

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09Feb

Backyard Grape Arbors for the Home Winemaker or Gardener

A pergola or arbor supports vines and provides shade and interest in a yard, making it both beautiful and functional. Back in my early twenties, I bought a younger friend of mine a home brewing kit for his twenty-first birthday, little knowing what I was unleashing. The beer from that first batch was terrible. The next twenty batches were bad, but uniquely bad each time. The twenty-first batch was acceptable as a near substitute for beer, but by then my friend was in college and had moved on to spirits and took up distilling. I hadn’t realized before this that Listerine...

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19Jan

Bolts with Sleeves Don’t Require Cutting Bolt Ends

Bolts with sleeves create a cleaner, ornamental look when joining two timbers. I’ve built many boardwalks, decks, arbors, pergolas, and pavilions over the years. Usually, they’re made from four-by-four posts with beams made from two two-by-sixes held on by bolts and nuts sandwiching the boards to the post. The bolts are usually bought in bulk, and are extra long so they’ll be able to reach through any number of boards. This leaves an unsightly three or four inches of threads clearly visible beyond the face of the board. If the bolt is any lower than about seven feet above ground, this...

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11Jan

How to Determine Pergola Rafter Spacing

Careful pergola rafter spacing along with attractive hardware will make your pergola a thing of beauty. I spent a happy eight months working as part of a carpentry crew at the Canaveral National Seashore in Florida. The seashore is a wildlife preserve, and to protect the unique ecosystem of the dunes, we were charged with building boardwalks, viewing platforms, and other elevated areas to keep visitors from treading the delicate flora of the dunes beneath their sandal-clad feet. Sometimes we would build pergolas on the existing deck surface of these platforms. The park service had a tendency to order too much...

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05Jan

Updating a Ranch Style House Exterior with a Front Yard Pergola

Updating a ranch style house exterior with a front yard pergola gives the home an entirely new aspect. Ranch style houses are the homes of the American Dream. Also known as ramblers and California ranchers, these are houses that were developed in the 1920s, built during the 1950s and into the 1980s, and, because familiarity breeds contempt, abandoned in the 1990s for a variety of revival homes that have collectively and contemptuously become known as McMansions. But the humble rancher endures, and was actually the first home designed for the modern lifestyle. They’ve been built and refined for over a century, and...

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