We bought one of those semi-permanent canopy/gazebo things on Friday. A nice little 10x10 box with canvas roof and mansquito-netting sides. The box said "Takes about 1 1/2 hours to assemble." I figure the unspoken element of that statement is "If you have 12 people working on it at once."
Started in on Saturday, by measuring the area and trying to figure out where the posts would stand. Bought some bricks for it to stand on, but had to level out the those sections as the backyard is a shallow slope. I honestly have no idea what I'm doing. You have to have some engineering degree I think (or probably just some basic homeowner skills, the kind that have eluded me for these past 10+ years). I could have sworn that I had measure the area correctly, but when I was done, my blocks where off in weird ways. Measuring, digging out the holes, leveling the bricks took most of Saturday (considering I didn't start until about 1 PM). So I did some of the assembly, but nothing went up.
Sunday, I finished leveling the bricks and then started in on the actually construction. To my horror, I realize that not only are all the bricks not completely level, they aren't exactly on the same plane (I expected this, actually. Refer to my Not Know What I'm Doing Statement). The whole thing was supposed to sit squarely inside each 12" brick. But now it's sitting oddly at edges on two of them, and almost off the third. Plus, because it's not all on the same plane, the whole thing is ever so slightly twisted. Which means that some of the bracings don't line up with their respective holes and, thus, have no bolts holding them in. Whatever. It's *mostly* okay. I had to twist some of the supports around to get them to line up even for one hole.
Around 4 PM I finally got the canvas top on and it was done. Not to bad, although I think next weekend if it doesn't rain, I'm going to try to shuffle the bricks so it's sitting firmly on all of them.
Totally build time: ~5 hours. That doesn't include the time I took to dig out the areas for the brick, that probably adds another 2 or 3, easy.
posted by Evil Wayne @ 10:30 AM
1 Comments:
You need a water level.
http://www.factsfacts.com/MyHomeRepair/WaterLevel.htm
That ones overly complex, but basically you need a hose that's filled with water, with marks on each end (clear ends, if not a whole clear tube) - marked off in inches or whatever.
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