A Pergola Anyone?

From reading the many local landscape magazines, we decided to have a pergola for our diminishing garden. We used to have a pretty large garden but slowly it was built up with larger car porch and awnings. Anyway there was still space for a pergola and we decided to have one.

This is how the pergola looks after being completed.

The pergola was ordered from a local wooden frame maker not far from the house. Though the order was made in November 2009, we have requested the delivery to be made in April 2010 because I was engaged in doing the other job on the house.
The pergola we ordered was of the size of 10ft x 10 ft x 6 ft from post to post. The long beam will be of 14 ft with an overhang of 2 feet on either side. The rafters are of 9 ft with an overhang of 1.5 ft. The posts are 6 in x 6 in x 8 ft cengal wood, the best heavy hardwood available while the beams are 2" x 6" x 14 ft and rafters 2" x 5" x 9 ft 'cengkawan' (merawan?) wood. This wood is as good as cengal.

The site before the stucture was erected.

When the pergola was ready, I prepared the site by making the concrete footings for the wooden posts.



The holes are filled up with concrete and a metal piece of 2" x 18" length is placed with a 6 in protrusion and left to set. Two holes of 12 mm diameter were drilled in place.
The supplier brought the materials and fixed them up. It took the 2 workers and his boss some 4 hours to fix.





This is how it looks from one end. my wife Fatthiyah has placed her flower pots around and some were hang on the beams. Soon we will be planting some grape plants to crawl on top of the rafters. I heard that there are marcotted grape seedlings available in Kota Bharu on Friday morning.
All in all it cost us less than RM2,000 to have this structure to decorate our garden.
The next project will be a wooden wakaf to sit beside the pergola. That project will come in October.
Who says pergolas are expensive to build?