Paint or Stain a pergola

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Broke ground and got 50% of it done, I decided not to use concrete at all, I used the E-Z spikes they sell at Lowes (bit more pricey), but so far I am very happy with them, drove them in 3 ft, they had NO issues holding the 4"x4"x7". I tried to pull them back out (just to see), and was unable to even budge them.

What I have left to do is ad my 45 degree cross braces, and fill in the top with the 2x4's and the last 4x4 and it will be mostly done. I used some 4x4 connectors normally used in house construction so it has some rough metal showing. I'm gonna buy some dog eared red wood boards and cut them up to cover the connectors. They only cost a couple bucks and it'll make it look pretty cool IMO. I'm sure I'll touch up some more stain here and there to make sure I have a nice coat on them. So right now I need to read up on pruning as my grape tree is pretty straggly right now heh.
 
I gotta do some major pruning on my grape tree so I can get it to start growing up the beam. I had no idea how nice this was gonna look (and how much 64 square feet was. So I'm deciding on how big the raised beds are gonna be behind this thing, I don't see the point in leaving a few feet between the fence and the raised bed as exactly eye pleasing. So that also raises another problem in that I have to Increase the size of the bed and thus need more hardware cloth or something else to line the bottom to protect from pocket gophers. I've also decided to run lag screws through my 2x4 into the 4x4's just in case, I was using 3 inch screws angled through the sides of the 2x4's to attach to my 4x4's, but this seems like an okay way to anchor them but I wanna make sure they're in for good.
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looks like you have a good start there. I know what you mean about finding problems after you start the project.
 
The pergola itself is about finished now its time to dig out all the grass around/in it for my raised beds. I'm not looking forward to that, and I gotta setup a water line under my concrete walkway for my beds.
 
The Germans developed cross-linked polyethelene tubing a number of years back that make a project like that a lot easier than the old plumbing methods. The fittings are more costly, but you only have to do them once. I used thousands of feet of that stuff in radiant floor heating systems.
 
If you're interested in seeing my raised bed click here, I just did something really basic and ran it around the side of the house to clean the area up and make it useful (btw it's a link to my facebook page)

And here is the finished Pergola.
 
Hey Mark,
Looks great! And believe me in time that grape will know exactly what he should do.
One question? Do you guys get high winds? In Fl we get some pretty good gust. I was thinking if the pergola were here, I would be adding some hurricane clips to the cross members. Over all it would help hold down the top structure once the vines climb. If they make a cover , winds could possibly use them to lift on the top. I only say this because we can't construct anything with a cross member that is not clipped. Just a thought.
 
I'm in the Central Valley of California, windy nearly never (I'm like 200 miles away from the Pacific) I'm nestled right at the foothills of the Sequoia National Park. But to be honest I haven't ever experienced any hurricane force winds, but I was pushing on the structure and it's pretty stiff. If we had winds I think if anything it would get pulled out of the ground before being dismembered. I have 5 inch lag screws all over it, 24 in all. I have the 4x4's attached together with this Simpson Strong-Tie 4 x 4 Post Cap. Each 4x4 has 12 2½" screws holding the caps on, if I feel necessary I may shoot a 3 inch lag in, but it would inhibit the option of installing some trim to cover up the brackets (I plan on using some redwood) for aesthetic reasons.
 
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Yeah, I suppose the title doesn't completely reflect what this topic is now haha. But I continued to update my progress just in case someone may also be interested in what I've done. In a few weeks I'm gonna start ordering my next step of parts. Which will be hardware cloth (but before that some serious grass removal) and I have some extra lumber that I will be able to use to form the raised bed. But I recently have had an interesting idea I'm gonna try and do. I'll make a drawing and post it. See what people think.
 
Markymark said:
I'm in the Central Valley of California, windy nearly never (I'm like 200 miles away from the Pacific) I'm nestled right at the foothills of the Sequoia National Park. But to be honest I haven't ever experienced any hurricane force winds, but I was pushing on the structure and it's pretty stiff. If we had winds I think if anything it would get pulled out of the ground before being dismembered. I have 5 inch lag screws all over it, 24 in all. I have the 4x4's attached together with this Simpson Strong-Tie 4 x 4 Post Cap. Each 4x4 has 12 2½" screws holding the caps on, if I feel necessary I may shoot a 3 inch lag in, but it would inhibit the option of installing some trim to cover up the brackets (I plan on using some redwood) for aesthetic reasons.
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Sounds good! I didn't realize you had used lags. We deal with so many hurricanes and gale force winds, that it was what caught my attention. We have to mechanically tie everything , even for a shed.
Never want to see anyone's hard work get blown away.
 
So left picture hardware, right picture covering the hardware with redwood. Now this is ugly looking redwood, and it's not exactly cut perfectly it's just for deciding on going forward. I'll probably end up sanding it nicely (get it down to that nice looking redwood) and staining it so I can keep some color.

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Nice cover-up Mark!
In reality very few people would even notice the metal brackets! I would have just painted the metal the same color as the wood!
 
I'll be honest I just enjoy wood working, and Aesthetics are important to me. Check out all this wood I just brought home! Courtesy of my uncle, gotta love free wood! Specially 4x4x12's and 4x6x12s!

This a rare picture of California, it's mostly a nice golden brown. We got a nice rain the other day and everything turned green. Gotta love the Golden State!
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I'm gonna use this for the raised beds, and to make it look nice I'm gonna run some nice redwood along the top to keep it looking like the rest of my garden.
 
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working on the bed around the garden now, couple pics of me building up the garden beds on the side of the pergola, this wood is old and it may be treated so I'm going to line the inside of them with plastic, plus it can only make them last longer imo.

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See the irrigation line I ran it under my concrete walkway - EASY! Tools needed, water hose with a jet nozzle, and a shop vac that can clean up liquids, and hammer and shovel. Dig down the side and aim your nozzle the way you wish to path your irrigation and while using the nozzle to dig under vac up the water in the hole so you can see whatcha doing. It took me more than 5 minutes to get from one side to the other. What made me take 5 minutes was the shop vac filling with water LOL!
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