Shade Structure

How we spent our winter, Part 4.

Looking back at our winter, it still makes our heads spin a little bit.  Trying hard to stay home, and keeping ourselves busy in the yard because of Covid-19 created some opportunities to take on a lot of work ourselves.  

We wanted a pergola or ramada for drinking coffee in the morning and watching sunsets at night.  

We originally got a quote for an aluminum pergola, but aluminum prices were soaring, and the quote seemed ridiculous from both a pricing and timing perspective.  So once again, we decided that we would just do it ourselves.  We knew that this one would be a challenge, but we knew we could figure it out. (Actually Steve knew he could figure it out, and I was along for the ride :).  Since we don't know how to do aluminum, we went for a ramada instead.

February 25th

Setting forms for the footers.

Hauling Lumber and concrete.

The most challenging part of this ramada is this 400 pound beam we will need to set for the front support.  Steve had a plan, but I have to admit, I was nervous.

February 27th

We started by building a hoist that would be used to lift the beam into place.

February 28th

We don't have any pictures of us hoisting the beam up, because it was all hands on deck, but in a nutshell, we used the wench on our RZR, and the pulley system on the hoist to slowly and carefully lift the beam into place.  It took us three tries to get the ropes right so that the beam was in the right position.

March 1st

Our ramada is starting to take shape.

March 5th, bare ground under the ramada.

March 11th, the travertine starts going in around it, but there's still a lot of work to do.

April 9th, we put the cement tile roof on shiplap ceiling in.