Pergola Trellis Building

Building the trellis wasn’t too bad, we got the whole thing built in a few hours. Mike bought the lattice in 2 pieces of 2’x8’. All of the pieces for the frame are leftover from the pergola project, which is why one of them is stained brown already.

We had one 2x4 at 12 feet, so Mike cut it down lengthwise with the circular saw just like we did for the pergola. Then he cut all 3 12 foot strips down to 97 inches, leaving 3 47 inch pieces for the horizontals. It’s really nice when things work out so neatly.

The lattice also had to be trimmed down to 88 inches tall. Originally I wanted it to be 89 inches, but we realized that would leave it touching the ground.

Once everything was cut I put the frame together with 2.5” exterior wood screws. I drilled pilot holes first with the drill, then used the drill to put it all together.

Then using the nail gun I attached the lattice to the back. I was so proud of myself for getting it together so quickly. I went to pick it up off the driveway and admire my work… and then realized it was STUCK to the driveway. I totally forgot to account for the length of the nails in the nail gun. They were too long. They were so long I nailed the whole freaking thing into the driveway.

I had to call Mike back over for help. Together we got it unstuck from the driveway and then I had to check out the damage.

It was pretty bad but salvageable. So many of the nails bent they didn’t want to come out. Instead we cut the nails sticking out the front with wire cutters and patched the holes with wood filler. I finished attaching the lattice in the loose spots with shorter nails.

From there we put it up. I dug 3 holes in the garden bed and we put the big, heavy trellis in. It was too high on one side, so we pulled it out, did more digging and tried again. It took some finagling but eventually it was just right. We attached it to the pergola with the nail gun and buried the feet. It’s really on there - we pushed really hard and can’t get it to budge.

Done! Now it does lean a little bit towards the pergola, but we knew that was going to happen ahead of time. The pergola is flush with the patio, the garden bed starts after that. We couldn’t get it any closer because of the buried outer plastic edging of the patio that holds it together. Once the whole thing is covered in vines, it will be less obvious and honestly it doesn’t bother me. I just can’t wait to get it stained!