Happy 99th Birthday, Pergola

I finished painting the pergola last week. The final part was painting the cement columns, which I did in "Lambswool" the same color as our window trim and back porch columns. Here is a column taped off at the capital:


And taped off at the base:


So now that it's all complete here is a view from the south:


A view from the east:


A view from the north:


And a view from the west:


So if we put this in last summer and just finished painting it now why celebrate its 99th birthday? Because I found a forgotten piece last week, that I had stashed away in my carpenter's box when we were salvaging the columns from their original location. You may remember that the columns were originally here:


I wrote about it here:
Going Vertical

When we were knocking apart the cement blocks on the porch I found this inside one of them:



In case you can't read it:

Built by
Bart Easlon
June 14, 1911
For Mr. M Wolbe

So I can say "Happy 99th Birthday, Pergola!"

Pergola in Action!

To finish a great Labor Day/Hawkeye football weekend we had Laurel's birthday dinner outside under the pergola. Both sets of grandparents and Aunt Lori and Uncle Matt were there. We seated a table of six under the pergola, and another table of four in the patio between the pergola and the pond:



On Saturday the Hawkeye footbal team played my undergrad alma mater, the University of Northern Iowa.

My Panthers gave Iowa all they wanted and then some. Setting an NCAA record, Iowa won the game by blocking TWO field goal attempts on consecutive plays, to win 17-16.

We had guests for the game from Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, and St. Louis as well as our usual visitors and friends. Here is one pic from before the game:


And one with three of my best childhood friends after the game:


And even though it wasn't from this past weekend, here is a special shot of the "Corn on the Cob" cupcakes that Rowan made after she took her cake decorating class, a great way to finish the "end of summer" post here on Foxcroft:


The "kernals" are jelly beans, the "butter" are starburst candies.

Beefier

So the 2 X 2 boards just weren't enough for the top of the pergola. So I went and got 12' 2 X 4's. My problem was I didn't want to take the 2 X 2's off. So, I just cut off the ends that extended beyond the main beams. I butted the 2 X 4's to the other boards and had them up pretty quickly. It looks much better:


I also ordered solar powered lights to string over the top. It was my gift to Lisa for our anniversary. They looked good here:


But last night I noticed that they weren't working...

In the Catbird Seat

After getting the main beams up it was time to put on the cross beams, I used all my salvaged lumber on the main beams so I bought treated 2 X 8 boards. The easiest way to put them up was to place them on top of the main beams and mark them where they would cross the main beams:


Then we used the jig saw to cut notches while we were on top of the pergola, rather than take each board up and down:


After we got the cross beams up we put on 2 X 2 boards over the top. As soon as we were finished both Pete and I said the 2 X 2's looked really stupid, because they weren't correctly scaled with the other boards:


As you can see above, they are barely noticeable. Next post will be how we corrected that situation.

Why We Needed a Scarf in August

scarf 2 (skärf)
n. pl. scarfs (skärfs)
1. A joint made by cutting or notching the ends of two pieces correspondingly and strapping or bolting them together. Also called scarf joint.
2. Either of the correspondingly cut or notched ends that fit together to form such a joint.
tr.v. scarfed, scarf·ing, scarfs
1. To join by means of a scarf.
2. To cut a scarf in.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Middle English skarf, as in scarfnail, probably from Old Norse skarfr, end piece of a board cut off on the bias.]

--Free Online Dictionary


So one of the great joys of working with salvaged materials is making them fit. All our floor joists were roughly 142 inches long, which was what we used on the east-west pieces of the pergola cross bars. That gave us just short of a two foot overhang. To get boards with a corresponding overhang on the north-south pieces we needed to scarf pieces together.

To start we clamped the boards side by side to each other, without overlapping, for the scarf joint distance. Then cut a series of 1" deep passes over both the boards with the circle saw. Since the boards are 2" thick taking out half of each board will give us the correct depth for the scarf joint.


Then we took a hammer and knocked out what was left between the grooves.


Our next step was to then take a wood chisel and get rid of any obviously high parts. After that we hit them with the plane


We then put the boards together in a dry fit to see if we liked it. Here we did


To keep the joint together we used Gorilla Glue. You don't want to get that on your fingers or anything else you value. We used a little chunk of wood to spread it on the end of each joint.


Then we put glue on the scarf area of both boards


We put the two sides together and clamped them. Then we sent five stainless steel screws into the first side.


Then we flipped it over and did the same on the other side.


After letting it dry we put it up on the pergola and clamped it into place so we could drill it for the carriage bolts that hold it in place.


Of the four north-south boards three have a single scarf joint and one has two scarf joints. My guess is that in a few years with enough vegetation growing on top of it, none of them will be noticeable!

Hubris or "The Other 90% of the Time"

As a famous person once said "The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time, the last 10% takes the OTHER 90% of the time..."

When we left off on the pergola build, Pete and I had set two of our four columns and were confident that the other two would go quickly. On Sunday afternoon we set the third column in about 20 minutes and were feeling pretty proud of ourselves. We reset the hoist for the last column and went to move it. As we lifted it into place a small chunk broke off the bottom (in hindsight we should have recognized this as ominous foreshadowing) We thought, "No matter. we have a total of six columns, we'll use one of the extras." We went and got another one and wrestled it into place.

We started pumping the hydaulic and were over the second base, with only 6 inches of re-bar to clear, when we realized the hoist wasn't going any higher. We lowered the column, repositioned it, and tried again. Same result. We lowered it again and tried to take some links out of the chain thinking we hadn't hooked it up correctly. Still not enough lift. Then the serious head scratching began.

Being a Sunday the rental place was not open. We decided to take the hydraulic arm apart. Neither had ever done anything like that before. We really couldn't really figure how to get it apart. We went and got fluid to add to the resevoir but it was already nearly full and we could force the arm back down when it was pumped.

Pete then called a friend whose daughter plays volleyball with Pete's younger daughter. He is a farm implement dealer in a town about 30 miles away. Pete thought this would be right up his alley. Luckily he happened to be in Iowa City, and came over in half an hour. He took it apart and looked it over carefully. After nearly an hour of not getting it to work either he casually mentioned that he HAS A HYDRAULIC ENGINE HOIST AT HOME IN HIS WORKSHOP!

Pete and I went on Monday morning to get it from his place. It had never ever been used. We brought it back and set it up:


We found, like the other hoist, it was too short. We blocked it with cement and posts and started to lift. I had to sit on the back end to keep it grounded:



In short order we had it over the re-bar:



While we were waiting for the mortar to dry a little (we mixed it too wet) I pulled out a cross beam and laid it into place on the columns we had already set. The cross bars are also salvaged. They were floor joists from the house the columns came from. The joists were full dimension 2 x 10 and were DOVETAILED into a 14 inch square beam that ran through the center of the house. The left side in the picture below was the profile the boards had when in the beam. The right side is straight because we had to sawzall them out to get them lifted.



I liked the profile so much we decided to use it for the cross bars. Here are the first boards in place.



Next post I'll tell about how we re-worked the beams to make the cross bars.

Going Vertical

After laying the pavers for the patio our next step was to build the bases for the pergola columns. The bases are three courses of cement blocks that have outer faces made to look like cut stone. These were salvaged, along with the columns we are placing above them, from a farmhouse torn down for a new elementary school, shown below:



The bases each had two concrete caps on them, that we ended up not using, here are some stacked up before we started working:



Pete had set re-bar into the footings for the columns that we had dug and poured before laying any of the pavers. He and I set the blocks with mortar, and string leveled the first course on all four columns, then we laid the second course and re-checked for level. We did the same for the third course too. We then put more cut re-bar into each base and filled them with concrete. I had bought limestone for the caps to replace the cement that we decided not to use. We drilled a hole into each large cap and set a rebar in the middle of each column, slipped the cap over it and mortared the top to the base. To get a smaller cap on top I had bought a very large capstone and with the grinder we scored it and broke it into four pieces. These were also drilled and then slipped over the re-bar and mortared to the first cap, checking for level as we went.



After this we knew we were in for the hardest part of the project: placing the columns on top of the bases. In removing the columns it was all Pete and I could do to carry and move them. Our guess was that they weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 300-350 pounds each. To be honest we were very unsure how to lift them up and drop them carefully onto a bed of mortar and be able to set them plumb. In the end we decided to rent an engine hoist.

Last Saturday afternoon the rental place called and said the hoist was available. We used a dolly to move the columns up to the patio.



After setting the hoist up we discovered its maximum lift was a foot lower than we needed. So we blocked it up with concrete blocks and 6 x 6 posts. We put it in place and got the first column over to the base. We dropped the chain through the column (they were poured originally with a piece of galvanized downspout through the middle) and slid a piece of re-bar through the chain at the bottom and hooked it up to the hoist.



Once we had it over the top of the re-bar we positioned it and lowered it just enough to catch the re-bar.




Then we marked a diagonal from each corner of the top cap to the re-bar in the middle and measured 4 1/2 inches from the re-bar along the diagonal. The base of the columns are 9 inches in diameter, so this gave us a guide as to where to set the columns.



We had also cut wooden blocks one inch tall and one and a half inches long and marked them so we could set them on the diagonal marks we had made.




We had already mixed a fairly dry batch of mortar. We then laid it onto the cap, and then re-set the wooden blocks onto their marks.



We then lowered the column down into the mortar until it sat on the blocks. The re-bar at the bottom of the colums was one half inch, and the chain link was another quarter of an inch thick. By sitting on the blocks we had just enough clearance to wigggle the re-bar out and pull the chain up the top. We then gently tilted the column to one side and then the other to pull the blocks out of the way. We then slightly twisted the column to set it into the mortar. Climbing the step ladder to the top of the column we used a square and a level to check for plumb. After being satisfied with it. Pete tooled out the extra mortar.



After the post was set we mixed a fairly wet batch of concrete and using a cut off milk jug poured down and filled up the cavity in the column, securely tying it to the base.



When we had the top filled we placed the capital on the top. We had drilled them also and place a threaded bolt through. The bottom end of the bolt went into the wet cement to tie the entire structure together. The top end of bolt will have a drilled 6 x 6 piece set onto it. This will give us something to attach the rafters to.



We set the first two posts and stopped Saturday evening for dinner. We were very confident we could finish the next two on Sunday afternoon without any problems at all. How wrong we were!

(to be continued...)

Remembrances of Salvages Past

For the last month Pete and I have been building a patio/pergola in the backyard. I’d been kicking around how to do this since I wrote about 4.5 Tons of Salvaged Goodness.

We decided to locate it near, but not right next to the pond. I decided on a roughly 10 X 16 size. My idea was to consider it two 8 X 10 squares. The one closer to the pond would be the conversation area, the one farther away would be a good place for a picnic table.

I don’t have detailed photos of the entire process, but here is the rough area after we rented a skid loader and leveled out the area and dug it out for the ag lime base. Of course it stared raining right after we finished so we quickly covered it with a tarp:



Here is a shot from the lower yard, we widened out one of the paths to accommodate the loader and to wheel barrow up the lime and later the sand:



Speaking of which, here is the sand pile, it was slightly smaller than the lime pile. We laid a level base of six inches of packed lime, then we laid packed sand on top of that.



We ordered pavers, in three sizes ( 3 X 6 inch, 6 X 6 inch, and 6 X 9 inch) from the local yard. I’d had four 30 X 56 inch pieces of soapstone that I bought from Friends of Historic Preservation’s salvage at 925 E. Washington St. in Iowa City. I wanted to center two pieces in the middle of each of the squares. So we measured and laid them first:



Then we started to lay the pavers:





I had a box of limestone pavers I found at the old UI law school salvage. I used those randomly throughout the field.



Next post I’ll talk about how we installed the concrete blocks and set the cement pillars on top of them.