Tools For Building Pergola

Series Summary

Learn how to liven up your garden or your backyard in this free home improvement video from our construction expert. What you need is a pergola, which is essentially a trellis of cross beams supported by columns and posts. It may be free-standing or connected to a building, and in some cases act as a cover for a walkway. Pergolas were popular features of Renaissance-era gardens, when they often played host to willow and hazel shoots.

In this series, our expert demonstrates the entire process of making your own pergola, from choosing the right tools, to creating patterns, to tracing and then cutting out these pattern from plywood squares. He shows you how to anchor the base in concrete, then attach the columns and supports to the cross beams. After watching this excellent series, you will be ready to renovate your garden.

Video Transcript

"Okay, this is Bob Street with Houdini Home Improvements on behalf of Expert Village. We are here in Mason, Ohio today and we are going to build a trellis. We've come onto the job site and the concrete fellows had been here before us. They've already poured the concrete slab and they have been nice enough to pour our footers for our trellis. So this is the step that we can't show you because it has already been done. But it is a basic step pouring footers and lining up pens to set our post on. We've got some post mounts that will set down onto these particular footers and we will have a 6 x 6 on top of that which will hold up the rest of the trellis. We are going to build a box around this post on the bottom so they can put some culture stone on it to make this look a little bit more appealing and try to match the decor in which they are after. So let's progress into that a little bit and see how we do. Here are the tools that we need to build the trellis or Pergola. We are going to need a 7 1/4 circular saw, we've got an impact driver, we've got a drill, chalk line, clamp, zig saw, a pass load power nailer, square, hammer and a level."