Wisteria Arch
There’s a new arch in the garden that’s destined to be covered in green vines.
Every project begins with a trip the stores. I do like putting stuff on a cart.
Of course, I completely forget to take pictures until this bit. At this point, the holes have been dug, the sono tubes sunk and some hardcode thrown in the bottom. The 4”x4” verticals have a hole cut for the horizontals to rest on - although I have put them the wrong way round, again. The holes are supposed to be on the inside of the arch, not the outside.
I didn’t want to concrete the verticals just yet. It’s too easy to get them wrong. Instead, I nailed them together with scrap wood and levelled them both together.
In order to cut out the arch pieces I started with an 8” wide section that would become a 6” curve. I followed an online tip for how to mark out the curve.
- rip a 1/4" strip of a wood
- put a few finishing nails at the end of middle of the curve
- bend the strip around the nails
That worked out well enough. Not sure the jigsaw followed the line exactly though! One tip: don’t use the first curve to make out the second curve, its too jagged. At least, it was for me.
The curves rested on the verticals and tied into the existing sunroom.<div class='imgWrapper imgBlock center' style='width: 80%; '>
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Still not sure about the tie. I put 2” thick pieces of wood either side of the existing frame and used coach bolts to fix them. The main curves are attached to this tie.
Because I had cut 8” for arch which was now only 6” after cutting out the curve, I needed to trim them.
The horizontals were cut out by running a circular saw over the joints a few times.
Then the joint cleaned up with a chisel.
Ta Da!
Through a minor miracle of measuring they popped right on. Actually that’s not true. The arch beams had warped a little meaning most of the holes were at least a 1/4” out. If only I had a 32” clamp I could use to bring them closer together.
I give you the double clamp method.
Now they popped right on.
I really didn’t like seeing the screws keeping the arches on the posts so I cut out some rounded squares to hide them.
