Dining Terrace Pergola

Hello dear friends, 

We have had a very productive week at the farm!  Many of you will recall that we have spent the last 4 years working on an addition for our old farmhouse.  I can assure you that what seems possible at the energetic age of 30 something becomes a little more challenging 25 years later!

😩

The grade around our house was an issue during construction and we decided to use large stones as a retaining wall to create a sort of sunken terrace.  This area is adjacent to our new dining room so have called it the dining area terrace.  We were quite happy with the area but it needed a finishing base.  The gravel you can see in this picture is large and is really meant as a foundation for something else.  We just hadnt managed to get around to the something else but thought we would like to ultimately have limestone screenings in this area.  So we agreed that this would be our outdoor project for this year.

My husband and I love to look at pinterest and unfortunately we somehow decided that a pergola over the seating area would be quite nice.   We thought it could give us a bit of dappled shade at noon and then later in the afternoon.

Of course that means construction.  If you are wondering the plastic wading pool is for the dogs.

For anyone interested in techie bits the posts were 16 feet tall and are sunk in 4 foot deep holes.  We have had a very wet spring and there is a lot of clay in this area so it could also be described as 4 foot holes with water.

We tend to improvise as we go and my husband decided that this would be the design of the end pieces.  If we had more time he would have liked to design something much more elaborate but the goal was to start and end the pergola project in one week.  This is a concept we have often discussed but have had trouble executing.  We are of course quite smug about this. 😃

We noticed a big difference in the trees from the beginning of the week to the end.  We had alternately very warm then quite cool weather.  And of course rain.

And here it is!  You may notice that our dogs photo-bomb many pictures.  This is Abby and Willow.

Here is a view from the opposite angle.

Lucy is one of the building inspectors.

Some detail to show the roof.

We have decided an adult beverage in this area at the end of the day is lovely.  And our darling Willow apparently agrees.  At the ripe old age of 13 Willow has free choice of any furniture and enjoys sitting at the table with us.

One final view before wrapping up the vacation and going back to work.  Our next vacation starts in a few weeks and we will be sure to have another project to work on along with looking forward to a visit from my sister-in-law who plans on staying for a few days.

Thank you for visiting and have a great week!