December backyard view

I just liked the way the light looked this afternoon, and the white roses and bougainvillea blooms by the fireplace.

Repainting the exterior trim and pergola

We had Foothill Painting come to repaint our exterior trim, which was getting worn, and to paint the pergola, which was also getting weathered. The pergola had originally been stained rather than painted, but it seemed more durable to paint it rather than try to stain it again. We used Dunn Edwards "Galway Bay" (DE 6305), which was a good match to the original color.

Day 24: Pergola completed, grill installed

Today they finished screwing together the pergola. The long heavy-duty screws that fasten the rafters to the joists were countersunk. Now it just needs to be a little sanding, oiled, and sealed. They set the grill into its new home, and installed the adjacent electrical outlet for the rotisserie. They installed the guts of the fireplace, touched up all the stucco, and cleaned the construction dust off the flagstone on the benches with an acid wash so it can be sealed with a rich color.

Day 23: Pergola coming together

By the end of today, they had all of the joists and rafters notched and end-cut, and they were starting to get them all fastened together. Lots of screwing. They also re-cut the beams. There had been a slight error in the location of the posts, causing the beam cantilever to be 2 inches longer on one side than the other. We did the easiest fix, which was to trim 2 inches off the long side, and that looks fine.

Also, now that they have the actual grill, they were able to fit it more precisely into its slot in the counter, and they filled the cavity with concrete up to the right level.

Day 22: Notching joists, counter tile grouted

Today they began doing the detail work of the end-cuts and notching on the pergola. He took down yesterday's mockup, did the end-cuts on the beams, remounted them, and did the end-cuts and notches on several joists. (The joists are notched on the bottom and the top.)

They also did the grout on the counter tile. We think the gray grout compliments the "blue celadon" tile nicely.

Day 21: Pergola mock-up

Today they worked on the pergola. The beams are notched, and they mounted them in the posts, and put all the joists across them. Then they notched a couple of rafters and put them up. Nothing's fastened, it's just set in place. They still need to do all the detail end-cuts, and there's more notching, so they'll take it all down again to do that. But this allowed them to verify the measurements and the level before they go further with it. And it allowed us to get a glimpse of how it's going to turn out. This evening, we were eagerly running around, looking at it, and through it, and from it. We're very pleased with the proportions. It's going to look great!

Another pergola example

George spied this pergola at St. John of God, one of the nursing homes he calls on. It kind of shows the 4x4"x4" technique our architect is proposing for our posts, although they just show it at the top of their posts and cover it up most of the way up. One interesting thing they did was instead of having the usual two beams sandwiching the post, they had one 4"-wide beam threading through the 4x4"x4". It's a nice look.

Pergola posts

Our architect is proposing to make our pergola posts be a composite of four 4x4" posts in a four-square arrangement, with 4" spacing between (that's "lumber inches", so 4" is really 3.5"). It sounds like a neat idea, and we haven't seen it before, though we did come across this photo of an example on Flickr (click to see larger). Our only concern is whether the composite post would be too "beefy" (it would be 10.5" square, though not solid). The posts in this photo look quite beefy, although if I'm eyeballing it right, those are four 6x6" posts. We just need to reassure ourselves that four 4x4" posts won't overwhelm the scale of our modest pergola (it'll be about 9' by 10').

We're not sure yet how the top of our posts would fit with the beams. In many pergolas, the beams align with the top of the posts, or even set on top of them. In this example, the posts rise above the whole structure (with an attractive "collar" cut). Don't know how that would look if we also had a third level of 2x2" rafters.

I also really like the end-cut on the beam and rafter tails. It's a nice clean modern line that would suit our house well. For our house, I don't think many of the more ornate end-cuts would look right, and I prefer more straight lines to round. Some modern pergolas just have a flat end with no cut, but George doesn't like that.

A good pergola example

I like the look of the end-cut of the tails on this pergola's beams and joists. I also like the layout with 2x6 joists and 2x2 rafters, both with 1' spacing. I like the joists notched into the beams. This is a similar situation to our patio, with a wall on the back and side of the pergola (in ours, there wouldn't be the wall on the left side), and it fits under the eaves. I could also imagine a variant where the whole thing was a bit higher, and that the rafters didn't extend quite so far, so that they could be level with the eaves instead of under them (i.e., the beam would extend under the eaves, but the rafters may not).