And Now for the Pergola

With the patio plan all figured out, the pergola needed to be properly planned as well. Our brand new pergola will be built in the same area as our second raised bed

Chris assigned me the task of planning out how the pergola would look. I browsed many many many photos on the internet for inspiration and settled on an interesting 3 level plan that created some cool squares

(image found here)

After I made the plan for spacing and wood sizes I handed the drawing to Chris to make the purchase list.

And then I went for a run. A normal run on the Mills College campus (my alma mater, woot woot!) I run the trail around campus a couple times a week. It's only 2 minutes away from our house, it's varied terrain and has some good elevation changes. And the campus is BEAUTIFUL and has many buildings designed by Julia Morgan. If you're in the area and never driven on campus, I highly suggest you make the trip

(image found here)

Anyway, back to the run I've made 100 times.

I was jogging through campus running by the Life Sciences building when all of a sudden I was pleasantly startled by a wonderful pergola

(image found here)

How had I never noticed that beautiful pergola?

I was smitten with the way the 2 sets of 2x6's simulated an arch by alternating the pitch of their run across the two outer joists.

I knew my change in inspiration would annoy Chris :) But I talked him into driving on campus to check it out

Swoon. I was in love

Now, this is a seriously HUGE pergola and requires some seriously beefy hardware to keep it from crashing down. Our pergola will be built with 4x4's, 2x6's, 2x4's and the like, not concrete poles like this one. But man, I just love that crisscross pattern

It's so beautiful and amazingly simulates a great curve

After checking things out we weren't quite sure what kind of hardware we'd need, but we agreed it was entirely possible to attempt to build (without too much difficulty. I hope.) We'll make some modifications - the overhang won't be so extreme on ours and we'll use different wood and hardware - but man oh man am I excited to build this beauty!