I’ve been working on a garden arbor for our place in Maine. It’s one of those gateway arches with trellis sides and benches on the inside of the gates, so you can sit down under the vines that are supposed to grow up and around the thing, if you want to and there aren’t insects hanging around. I bought the lumber at Red Mill several weeks ago — maybe back in May, in fact — and had been working very gradually on it unt the weekend before last. At that point I got out the saber saw and cut out the arch parts. Once that was done I started to really believe in the project. Before then end of that weekend I dipped the ends of all the wood in some clear preservative, some kind of Cabot’s oil, and stacked them to dry for a week:
This past weekend I put a coat of primer on all the pieces — well, most of the surfaces of all the pieces. I ran out of time before I got to the end. Even just with the primer you can see why I’m getting more and more to believe that the project will get done:
After looking at that picture, I figured I could do some photoshop work to give you a better idea of what I’m talking about. First of all, I need to flip that picture upside down, to get the arch the right way up. Then, I’ll sketch in the vertical supports and some of the trellis parts — dum de dum de dum — and erase a little of the pieces of wood that are going to be the verticals. You’ll have to imagine the rest of those pieces being erased, because I got bored doing it before finishing. If you can put up with the lawn being upside down, this should give you a very rough idea of what I’m after:
