By
eHow Home & Garden Editor
Difficulty: Moderately Easy
Things You’ll Need:
- Tape measure
- Pencil and paper
Step1
Determine how big you want your patio overhead to be and where you want it to go. Assess how much space you want to have for your patio and what you want to be able to do in your patio space.
Step2
Put the end of your tape measure next to your house. Pull your tape measure out as far as you need your patio space to be. This is how wide your patio space should be. Write down that information.
Step3
Use your tape measure to measure how long you want your patio to be. Take into account any existing doors or windows in the patio area that you want to incorporate in your outdoor living space. Measure the length of your patio, and write that number down.
Step4
Measure how far you want the overhead to extend. You might decide to extend the overhead past where the patio ends. Typically a patio overhead goes past the living space by 1 or 2 feet. If you want the overhead to be at an angle, draw a triangle diagram and compute how big the top side of your angle will be. This is how big your overhead materials need to be.
Step5
Outline the location of the posts that will support the overhead and measure for them. Measure from the ground up to the roof of your house. This is the length that your posts will appear above ground. Add 2 feet to that length to determine the full length of posts you need to buy.
