Planning & Prepping A Carport Pergola

What carport? This carport. You know, the one that nearly kept us from considering this house because we were so anti-carport? My how we have changed our tune after spending a few years with it…

Sherry in fact mentioned the new tune we are signing back in this Listy McListerson post: “we originally hoped to convert this into a garage, but now we are leaning towards adding a trellis arch so it is all lush and fairly like a carport with a pergola instead of being closed in and dark like a garage (we’d lose some light from two windows into the laundry room and office if we closed it in).”

The lost windows were a big game changer, since we learned that fire codes would require us to close them off. See this guy over our built-in desk? It would be gone-zo along with the window in the laundry room.

We also got over our need for garage storage because our basement and attic have proven more than sufficient. So Operation Garage Conversion has officially become Operation Carport Fancification. Our main tactic? Adding the architectural interest that Sherry described above. In short, taking it from something like this…

…to something like this. Simply more real, less Photoshop-tacular. And perhaps with some pleasant greenery running up it.

If that Photoshop job is not doing it for you (it is barely doing it for me) the first image in this article might. It was not until we began hunting for inspiration that I realized attached pergolas are a thing. Some fancy folks even dub them “garage arbors.” So the idea of a carport arbor (a “carbor”?) did not seem that far-fetched. But figuring out how to in fact build one had me all like…

Then Google led us to Workbench Magazine. Well, specifically this 2008 article on – you guessed it – building an attached garage pergola.

And it was not simply any article. It was an article with building plans and diagrams. Glorious, glorious diagrams.

And, as if the pergola heavens were shining down upon us, their plan was simply about the exact size of what we needed to do, so we could follow their material and cut list nearly to a T. Hallelujah. So I printed out the plans and made myself a date with the Lowe’s rental truck.

After finding the plans, and buying and hauling back all of our materials, we were at last able to get a start building this weekend, and the first step was installing an extra column on the house-side of the carport (since we needed a place for the pergola brace on that side to attach).

We are right now in the process of rerouting the drainpipe, priming and painting a lot of wood, making our own curved wooden braces, and cutting all of the slats for the top part. So if all goes well, we should have that knocked out by early next week so we will be back with a post full o’ details for you folks then. The plans involve some fairly intricate cutting and bracing (at least by my standards) so we will have to see how all that goes. Wish us luck!

People ask us how we get the courage to take on larger building projects like this a lot, and our answer is consistently “break them down into smaller parts so your brain does not explode.” So to demonstrate that, here is our own broken-out pergola to-do list:

• find or create our own plans
• figure out exactly what pieces of wood/screws/bolts we need and somehow get them home <–we rented a Lowe’s truck for $20 to get the 16′ boards home
• prime and paint the wood beforehand (should be much easier to do this before things are assembled) <– this is about half done, hence the half cross out
• build a column on the left side of the carport so the bracket on that side can rest on it
• build the curved wooden braces and bolt them in securely
• lay the boards and slats across the top, making sure they are all level and secure
• find some vine to creep up the thing for extra credit

Anyone else out there ever built a pergola? Who thinks HGTV should add Pimp My Carport to their programming? Simply me?

Psst- I wrote this for Boston.