How to Build a Pergola with Retractable Awning

hey y'all i'm james wright and welcome to my backyard today we are going to be making this pergola and this is a project i've been wanting to do for a while i was originally thinking about doing some timber framing and things like that but i had the wood on hand and needed to get into it so today we're gonna be using these things with cords called power tools [Music] welcome to my backyard this is where we're gonna be building the pergola and isn't it in a great spot most of this lumber is actually stuff that has been reclaimed from a uh deck that was torn up a neighbor recently had and gave me all this lumber i was like yes great i had to buy a couple other pieces the the six by six for the legs and then uh some two by twelves twenty four foot long um are the main beams but the rest of it is uh stuff that i got for free basically so the first thing i want to do is lay out where all these are going to intersect we have the the secondary beams which the ones i'm working on right now that are going to get a half lap joint that then saddle joints onto the 24 foot long beams so these need a slot cut out of them and the easiest way to do that is just to grab the saw and run on down them all i want these all to be parallel because they'll all be crossing the beams at the same distances so i'm clamping them all together evening them all up and then ripping them all down now having gone through them i cut either side of the channel i wanted to chop out i should have gone back through and put in several more curves it would have made it much easier to remove all that but i thought now i'll just chisel it out like i normally do like for furniture but oh well you live and learn and yes i am using power tools because i'm not going to go at this with a handsaw this was a weekend project to get it done it was about uh one week to one weekend to actually build the structure another weekend for the for the cover now i wanted to make decorative ends on this and yeah we're pulling out the power saw again so i went through all uh 17 of these beams and cut a uh angle on the end i didn't want anything special or curvy i just wanted something that was the right shape and that i've been doing this on a lot of my furniture and i just kind of like that that shape now we need to cut out the rest of that notch so we did the circular saw chop out either side and then i can bring out the chisel and chop in from either side to pop out this block um this is well normal woodworking right here and they they come out and then i can come in and clean them all out i wanted to get a nice clean joint on here so they all fit in well and it was it was important to to gang cut these all together so that all of these slots are relationally the exact same and so we marched through all these uh it was about uh what 15 minutes per board to make all the cuts and clean them out so 17 of them done it took a little while now on to these six by six legs these were ten foot long and i need them to be what nine and a half foot so i need to cut them down i'm also making a whole pile of slots in them at the top that will then hold the cross beams that get attached to it so we're cutting off about 18 inches or so on these and now we need to create the slots that the beams will rest into these so we're going to recess the beams into them and then bolt them in place for the video i just ended up screwing them in place but we will be bolting them eventually so i wised up on this one rather than cutting large slots we cut a whole bunch of small slots and chipped them out and the more i did it the more i used the circular saw to cut more and more slots and by the end they were like a quarter inch apart so we did quite a bit on this particular one i messed it up and i made several of the saw cuts too deep so you can see there's a chunk that that came out that's a bit too deep on there but oh well they still work the same but here you can see on this one a two by ten will go into it and house down into the joint and you can see how it will fit down in there and then i can run screws into that the two by twelves then go perpendicular to these across the other way so here's one of the two by 12 slots and then you can see there's an overlap in between the 2x10 and 2x12 that's where the housing joints will then connect together so yes we're having a little bit of fun cleaning these up really nice like this is a two by ten i'm testing it but a two by twelve will be what's going in there also i'm going to chamfer off the top corners and make them um kind of pointy just to make them a little more decorative now we're going to set these up oh yeah we need to find a location for this so i'm actually going to oh wait no before we're going to do it we actually have to cut the two by the two by 12's um yes we have to cut these as well we're going to be creating an angle on those as well there's four of these that need to get chopped up so we're cutting that same angle on there and then we are going to be cutting 17 slots in them that the other boards will house down into so they go down into these one inch and they go down into the other boards two inches so there'll be three inches of overlap between them and here i made a lot of sock cuts which make them very easy to pop out you see how these 24 foot beams are well they're rather large so i can lay them all down here find out exactly where i want those six by six legs to go but in order to stand up those six by six legs i need to actually brace them so i'm grabbing some of these angled cut off slats and turning them into stakes trying not to hit my hatchet on the concrete don't hit the hatchet on the concrete so i'm going very very soft on them trying not to overhit them or i could just take it over the dirt and hit them and be done but in this case we're going to use these stakes to drive them down in and this will be what the diagonals can connect to to hold these legs upright so a couple of these around each one make it a lot easier i didn't get it on on camera but i also got some bases that are held down in and i used ram set nails to drive them down into the concrete a couple of the nails were sticking up a little too high so i did drill out the bottom of the post so when they went in it would the nail would then house up into the beam the brackets then put screws in from the sides and that will hold it so it's not sliding around but it won't hold it vertically and for that we need to then put in some diagonal bracing to those those spots we had kids were very very useful here some of them would give me screws some of them would hold things for me and it was kind of nice to to bring them in and show them something different they were very impressed with how loud the circular saw was but a little bit of time we put in a few braces and we get these six by six standing up now for the next part i need to actually put in these 24 foot long beams and i wasn't about to have the kids help me with that because these are each like probably around 150 200 pounds a piece they're they're relatively beefy things ah not quite 150 they're they're heavy though so those go into the joint and we're going to put two screws into them temporarily until i come back and put bolts in there's one of these on either side of the 6x6 here you can see i wanna i cut the gap a little bit too big and i'm gonna be filling that in with another piece here in a little while so two of these 24 foot boards one on either side and fitting into the six by six now we can bring in the purlins and pop those into place and these took a good bit of working to get down in we had to finagle the beams back and forth and get everything wiggling in because they have to house down into the joints and then pop into the 6x6 so with a good bit of persuasion and violent manipulation they pop down in you can put some screws in and hold this all in place temporarily and that's four of the 17. oh boy um actually the rest of them went really quickly especially when you speed up the video they they go up there really nicely but the nice thing about these is i don't have anything holding them in place they just go in and pop into place now i could put screws down into them and hold them down in but they they actually hold in really really well and we take a severe amount of work to to move them now we're going to move on to the awning that will go underneath this for this i need a whole bunch of these three quarter inch conduit pipes cut to length and these will be what hold the awning up in place so we're going to cut these all to length bring the kids in to help them out and then i need to mount them so there will be a screw holes that need to go through in pairs so lay them all out and then make a mark on the top of every piece so that all of them have a screw uh a place for the screw hole i'm drilling a 1 8 inch hole and this will be what these screws you can drive into drilling the hole just makes it much easier for the screws to catch even though i'm using self-tapping screws they'll go into this a lot easier after we've cut into all of this we're going to spray paint it all blue because the awning will be blue surprise surprise i kind of like the color blue we're going to spray paint these all make them blue and that way they disappear when they go into the the blue fabric now we also need to cut diagonal supports so i can get rid of these diagonal supports on the ground but before we get into that i need to hang a hammock because we were gonna have uh we're gonna have some sun out and i wanted to relax for a little bit so we put some eye screws in between the legs and oh look we have a hammock hung up a couple of these and they just really make it up i'm going to be putting a few other spots for that so now back to these diagonal braces these are going to be kind of temporary or permanently temporary i just want to cut braces to go on each corner so i can remove the ones that are connecting to the ground eventually i'm going to come back through and timber frame something else to uh to go into them but for right now i just need to get this in place i just don't have any other six by sixes right now to make those beams so you can see how they just go up and diagonal and screw them in place three screws per end and we're good to go now back on to the awning this is the fabric for this and it is a it's intended for the awnings and it is a uv protected awning i need to seam all the edges lengthwise i have it's what like 60 feet worth of this um that needs to be seamed on both sides i cut it into four panels um 10 foot well they're like what 12 foot long ish and they need to be seamed so we're using seaming tape to go all the way along it makes it a lot easier so i can just run along it also using a uv uh poly thread that won't rot into the sun and outside so make seams all the way down them and then we can turn it 90 degrees and we need to make pipe pockets and those pipes that we cut earlier need to go all the way across this so for the pipe pocket i'm just going to fold it over large enough so that the pipe can fit into it which was about an inch and a half leaving the open on the end there and then run it back run back down the line you see i put a magnet on the sewing machine there letting me know where the seam is you see how the pipe pocket fits in here now we have the pipe pockets on the end we need to put pipe pockets in the middle and so i want the pipe pockets i think on mine they were what 30 inches apart so now it was a little bit more than that because it was 18 inches to the middle so i folded over the 18 inches and then used a couple paper clips to hold in place and normally i would use needles for it but this fabric it just didn't work out well but the paper paper clips hold it in place so that i can bring these all over the sewing machine and then run a seam down at each of these joints and this will then create a pipe pocket partially along the fabric so that i'll get the drape running from point to point you see again how the magnet provides a guide so that i know i am creating enough space for the pipe to fit in now we can take this outside and start putting the pipes in we have all these pipe pockets along we can slide the pipes into the pipe pockets now to hang this up we're actually going to use a little stainless steel loops that bolt on and i have self-tapping screws that go into it took actually a little bit longer and i was expecting to put all this together the the awning took almost as much work as the rest but i was very very happy when it was on especially with all the stainless steel loops they go up pretty well now we need to hang up all of the cabling that the awning hangs on and for that we're putting in eye screws um all the way along so there'll be basically two tracks running from end to end and they'll be separated in the middle so it'll be split into two tracks that are too long we're using an eighth inch stainless steel cable and i'm using niko press clamps crimps clumps clips crimp clips to hold on to the tensioning device and so this will then allow me to pull this cable nice and taut yes i really like niko press it just makes everything so much simpler and cleaner and uh just looks a little more professional so you can see how this will then go in and the turnbuckle will pull these together keeping them nice and tight now before putting on the niko press i actually hung clips all the way along the line and so now i can bring the awning up and actually clip it into all of these clips and these will then slide on the cable so when not in use it can store off at the end and then when in use i can pull it back out and that way if there's a windstorm or something like that they can be stored actually storing them in the middle and then pulling them out to either end and they actually go really quickly and easily ended up putting a rope on either end to make it easier so if you're not as tall as i am you can still reach them now the last thing is they didn't stay at the end and so i got some magnets that i can put in with screws onto the beam and these magnets will then hold into the pipe on the pipe pocket so i pull them out they'll go click and it all holds it right into place i'm very very happy and i really like how these came out it's a very simple thing just to pull them out set them into place and when not needed they slide right back in and this has made all the difference we've spent so much time out on them since having this it really works out well and i am i'm happy really really happy so there you have it this has been uh this has been a fun one i know there's a lot of other things i want to do to it i really want to get rid of these and put in six by six uh timber frame corner braces and there's a few other things like that that i want to do along the road just didn't have time to right now we want to get it out so we family can enjoy the backyard and have a good time in here and there's a bunch of other little things like that i'm going to do this is just a quick project to use some extra timbers that i actually had lying around and get this done because we've got summer to come out here so i hope you like this a very different build something that's uh not normal but if you did like it please let me know in the comments below if you didn't like it let me know that in the comments below i'm sure i sparked a whole bunch of uh discussions and things of people saying you need to do it this way you need it that way let me know those down below i'd love to read those so if you didn't like this video just hang on we'll be getting back to the drawer build next week but until now we've got a pergola and some shade and can enjoy the backyard i want to say a huge thank you to the patrons on patreon without you things like this would not exist so thank you for that the members here on youtube who've clicked the join button the patrons on patreon you guys are making wood by right what it is today and without you this would not be here so thank you so i think that'll about do it for today and until next time have a wonderful day pergola per k parque pergo pergola per gallola per kayla lagoga pargulo

Channel: Wood By Wright How To

Views: 45,268

Keywords: Wood By Wright, wood By Wright 2, Hand tools, Handtools, Woodworking, woodworking, Hand tool, Hand Tools, Hand plane, Hardwood, Hardwoods, pergola, pergola build, diy pergola, retractable awning, pergola awning, pergola awning retractable, how to build a pergola, how to make a pergola, pergola diy, pergola ideas, pergola designs, building a pergola, pergola construction, build a pergola, diy, do it yourself, how to, how to build pergola, pergola canopy, pergola installation

Id: r5TZx7krOaE

Length: 15min 38sec (938 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 13 2020