5 Stunning Pergolas Builds To Completely Improve Your Backyard

Quite often there are areas of your garden that get forgotten about and then they quite quickly become dumping grounds. A little bit like this pergola. So I want to give it a new lease on life, a bit of a makeover and bring back its purpose. Now that's going to start by giving a lick of paint and I think I'll take inspiration from these and go white. I'm also thinking some screening. I'm thinking a lovely bench seat with a built-in planter so we can sit down and enjoy the garden and then I'm going to add lots of colour. But it all starts with a good clean out. Whenever you're doing a project, no matter how big or small, you've got to be prepared for things to go a little bit sideways. Here we removed the pockets that are on the wall and we found that down the bottom all the timber is just rotting away and that's because water's got up and it's soaking the boards. I just need to cut through this board, remove all the rot and that will leave me with an open bit. Not really a problem because we're going to be putting our bench seat right in front of it. I've knocked up a really simple frame for my screen. Just added treated pine and painted it white to match my pergola. Now I'm using these really rustic old palings and I'm going to be putting them on a bit of an angle. It's going to give me a lovely backdrop and screen out the shed and it's going to look nice and solid but allow air flow through and light so it's not going to feel bulky. I'm building a really simple stud work frame for my new bench seats. That way we're going to have a nice spot to sit down and enjoy the pergola. We've got a top rail and a bottom rail. I'm just going to screw that together. Once I've done that, I'll do a second one and we're basically building a big rectangle that we can clad in timber later. Thank you chaps. So we've cut up some marine ply to create a really big box. Don't worry, I'm not going to do my happy birthday Mr President rendition and jump out the top of it. It's to put some plants in to sit behind our bench seat. Now using marine ply means it can go outside. It's not going to warp, it's not going to twist, it's going to be totally fine. I'm just going to screw this together and you'll see exactly what I mean. And there you have it. I've screwed myself into a box. So hopefully you can now see what I was thinking. We've got a planter and we've got a seat but we're missing a top. So I'm just using treated pine decking boards and they will clad the top here. But before I screw those down, I'm going to pre-paint them. I'm really happy with how our screens come together and the louvers work really well. They screen the fence out but you can still catch glimpses of the gum behind. We're just going to pop it up into the space and bugle it off. To replace the old rotten green wall that was here, I'm just using some Rio mesh. This is just concrete as mesh. We're going to mount it to the wall like this and then we can hang some pots on there. What we'll also do is put it over the roof as well so when we've got some climbers over the top they're not going to hang down and make it feel dingy and grungy. Rather than fill this whole box up with soil just to plant it out, I've been a little bit smarter about it and I've just put a bead of timber around the inside of our box. I'm just using a plastic tub. That's going to use a lot less potting mix and it's going to be much easier if we ever want to change the plants over. This is much easier to plant up than all of that. When you're planting up a trough like this you need plants that can handle the conditions. There's not too much soil here and it's going to be quite hot and glary underneath our pergola, so I'm using some of my favorites. This is a digiplexus. It's a cross between a digitalis, a foxglove, and an isoplexis. One of the benefits of this over a foxglove is it can take full sun and it comes in an array of different colors. I'm going to be using that for a bit of height. To balance that off I'm using euphorbia. Euphorbia can take lots and lots of sun. I'm also using a little native violet and I'm using this to spill over the edges and down the front. To finish it off it's tied all together a little bit of silver with this lovely cotton lavender. To bring our palace of white to life and to give a bit of greenery and soften the Rio I'm using it with some pots. So in these smaller pots I've fashioned a wire that we can just hang them on and I'm going to be planting up aromatics like this lovely thyme and these strawberries. For the hanging baskets though we've got a bit more space and for that I'm going to be using pelargoniums and geraniums. You can see how this is really coming to life just by adding some plants. I've also knocked up another cube just to match our bench seating. Now this can be used as additional seating, a space to stretch out your legs, or you could use it as an occasional table as well. And we've turned this area that was uninviting and unappealing into a lovely spot to come and relax. I think it gets the pretty pergola tick of approval. I'm Jason. I'm Catherine. Hi Catherine. Yeah we just thought we'd walk into a random's backyard. Thank you I appreciate that you walk into my random backyard but it's a bit of a mess at the present moment. I need your help guys. Yeah I don't think it's a mess it's just a bit empty. Thank you Adam I appreciate that. And anyway it's perfect for what we have in mind, Asian style resort living. A pergola with the posts set into a slightly raised deck, a water feature otherwise known as a pond with fish and lush tropical plants. Love it absolutely love it. All right let's get busy. That's it any of you's good at digging holes because there's a fair few holes to dig today so. How about I do some baking and you guys do the digging of the As always mark up your space and get digging. Now you might have noticed I've put some bugle screws down in the bottom of the timber that's going to sit inside the footy. As the post gets encased with the concrete it's not a real lot that's tying the two together but having those screws sticking out encased by concrete as well really anchors down our pergola. But before we add the concrete we're going to put the beams up so first we need to add some bracing. To bring that Asian feel into our backyard I'm going to be creating a feature beam for the front face of our pergola. To do this I'm going to take a long triangle out of the bottom of the beam and cut the ends on an angle as well and before you get your beams up give them a coat of paint. We've chosen hot ginger. Now we've got to put a beam on both sides of this deck. It's a lot easier if we get level down there and measure up so from the floor to the bottom of our roof is going to be 2.3 meters. If we put on a couple of blocks. You alright there Jase? Yeah I'm just using my chins. Check them for level means when we grab our beam we can put it up here and we can have a hand free rather than wrestling with the weight. We've got about 600 overhang at both ends which is heaps more than we need. We're going to come back to about 300mm which will line up with the deck that we're building below it but if we get it up we can prune it later. Is pruning the term you use as a carpenter? No I don't think I've used pruning before. We're just about to concrete the posts in. You'd probably think we'd do this first but now all the banging and bashing is done we're setting them in using concrete not rapid set because that's more structurally sound then we can leave it to dry and take these braces off. And it's a little bit cheaper too. You got that mate? Yeah. Nice. Beautiful. My goodness what have you guys been up to? Not as much as you. Would you like me to take that off your hands? You can have it. See I did the baking. Now what do you think of it so far? Looks pretty good. It's just monkey bars like at the playground. Not really there's a floor that goes through here then we can put some shade over the top but actually I've got to go and do my shopping for what I'm going to do around the side. You're going to leave that for me. Well your hands are full this would be perfect for me and Danny to snack on in the car. Isn't that a cool insert? It is isn't it? I'll just have a two hammer. You just have a hammer you can do all the work okay? Now any kind of pond or water feature I reckon needs a little pump involved just so you can break the surface of the water and not get mozzies but we're going to put fish in this one it's going to be a fair size so we need to go for a decent size pump. Large fish pond. I am sold and because the fish are going to do their business in the water I need to keep it clean so I'm going to grab a filter as well. It's a bit of a cost but it's worth it to have a nice beautiful clean pond. Now speaking from experience of building ponds and water features for over 20 years I reckon the easiest way to do it is with a liner. Now they're not the prettiest thing in the world but they're guaranteed of one thing they don't leak but the one we're building is kind of an irregular shape it's going to wrap around the deck so the best way to do it is with pond liner. Now this is kind of a thick version of a tire inner tube you can cut it and shape it any way you like. Nice now I think palms more than any other variety of plants say tropics so I'm going to plant some of these guys they're golden canes something small five to ten bucks something like this about a meter tall twenty dollars but I want something the height of the fencing so they might cost me sixty or seventy dollars each. Can't see them on the floor but I can special order them and get them delivered. Another plant that says the tropics to me and is great for the understory are bromeliads. Oh well you're coming home with me. Awkward. What happened? I had a little bit but Danni had a lot she loves apricot upside down cake. Okay so it's her fault. Yeah so I'm still quite hungry. All right do you think I should go do some more baking? I'm joking I've got to get busy I'm going to build you a pond. Okay. Rather than dig the pond we're going to build it up using tree to pond sleepers kind of like a raised garden bed. All I need to do is build this up I'm going to put a hundred mil sleeper on top of it that'll give me 300 mil of depth which means my water will be about 275. That's legal anything less than 300 is okay. As far as the deck goes using handy blocks means it couldn't get any easier. I don't have to dig any holes so you just sit them in place level them up and away you go. Once your blocks are in place it's as easy as sitting your bearers in. Now in my case I'm going to be fixing to the two outside posts instead of having the blocks there. We're ready for the joists now you just want to make sure that you space them out at no more than 450 mil. I've added these extra timbers in that are supported on the edge of our pond so once the deck goes down it gives the illusion that everything's floating. Now when it comes to decking everyone thinks you need to go a hardwood deck to get a nice finish but for half the price you can get tree to pine decking and with the amount of stains that are out there you can make it look like any hardwood deck you like and also if you keep the maintenance up it will last just as long. I'm using a traditional decking oil in a colour called blackburn which is a great contrast to the hot ginger on our pergola. Now have you ever seen a dog move super quick? You ready? Earlier I stapled the edges of the pond liner before Adam's deck went down. The next step is to add the water that'll weigh the liner down then I can staple off the rest. For this amount of water we need a good size pump and filter and the fish need oxygen so we're going to add a little riser that'll take it from the air and add it to the water. Some smooth river pebbles will hide the liner. Hey hey hey daddy calm down it's all right love it's all right. A safe work site is a fun work site isn't it Dan? Ah she can't hear me. Tidying up the edges is just a matter of cladding with the same timber we used on the deck and our tropical garden needs tropical plants. These golden cane palms I ordered are doing just what I hoped, screening off the fence. I'm a fan of putting rocks into gardens because they can give the place an instant age and it's very Asian but this one's pretty cool because the colours of the moss and the lichen are very similar to the stain that we put on the deck. To finish off the pergola I'm just adding some bamboo screening on top which will create shape but also give it that Asian feel that we're after. Now as a young man I backpacked around Vietnam I've got to say it's one of the prettiest places and nicest places I've ever been and of course tropical plants flourish in Vietnam and Cambodia but here we've got to use plants that give us the right look but will cope with the cooler conditions. Cordylines, ginger and bromeliads will all work. The big bonus they're low maintenance and you get the colour all year round. This kind of garden is my kind of garden. Now this one here is Australian fan palm it's got fantastic leaf structure to it. They are slow growing it might be an investment for the kids. One day I'll outgrow this pot but it won't happen anytime soon. To make the water feature a little bit more dynamic I'm adding two big ticket items. The koi we're just getting them acclimatised and then the plants that gives it a bit of height makes it look more natural. This old bit of recycled hardwood is going to be the step up to our new deck but because it comes pretty rough I'm just giving it a quick sand to stop splinters. Danny watch out you'll get squashed. This is a lot. How beautiful and simple is that recycled step. I'll just get a spade under there and we can level it off. Level it up well that'll be beautiful mate. Speaking of spades, thank you Miss Cootie. I like it. Now the old lawn, well you can't really call it that, the old weeds that were down here weren't working because the ground was compacted and it was the wrong grass. It was kai kui which doesn't handle the shade. This is Surwater, it's a soft leaf buffalo. It can handle more shade, fair bit of traffic and as you can see this is a good quality turf so it's nice and thick. The thicker your grass is the less weeds you're going to get. And as far as the perfect time for laying turf, it's about one minute before a big storm. So the weather gods are on our side. All we need to do now is wait for them to finish watering our turf. What was once a barren and uninviting space now looks like a million bucks and it's a real haven for Catherine and her family to enjoy. Oh my goodness. What do you think? It's incredible. Absolutely amazing. You like it? You guys did a great job. Oh my goodness. What do you think? It's amazing. It's amazing. I see fish in a plastic bag. Yeah well we thought we'd leave the fish to the people. We've got to look after them for mum and dad. Of course. You know you have to walk them twice a day. Exactly. Feed them. Yeah feed them. What's your favourite thing? Uh the fish. The fish? Well mine's your beautiful pergola Adam. You've got to say something about his pergola. Exactly. I love the pergola. What about the plants? They're amazing. They're unbelievable. I'm most happy about the grass. I tried to get grass down here a while ago and it just wouldn't take and that looks fantastic to see again. Are we gonna open up these fish and let them out? Uh yeah. Release them. Go fishy. Wow they are big. Wow. Wow it's a little courtyard that needs some love, maybe a rescue. A bit of a cleanup, a revamp. We could create a whole new room out here. Best thing about this is Liz and Matt are really deserving. They're both freely give up their time volunteering for the SES. Sparking a full-scale search. And we've really come to rely on them because it seems every few months Australia's suffering from storms and floods. Spend about 20 hours a week training our members. You can get pretty full on. Matt and Liz are so dedicated they actually met during the SES work. Here they come. G'day mate. G'day Liz. What are you guys doing here? Oh we thought we'd just let ourselves in. I grabbed a few familiar faces. That's it. You guys give so much to the SES that we thought we'd give some back to you and give this area a major fix up. What do you think about creating a nice entertainment area out here? Oh wow that'd be awesome. Yeah it definitely needs a bit of a touch up. The idea is to replace the tight entrance with a new deck and seat. Add some trees for shade in summer as well as increase the privacy from the neighbours. But the highlight is a brand new pergola to create a dining area. All right you guys ready to help? Yeah. All right let's get this awning down. Oh you mate you take safety serious here. Oh for sure any time the guys get up on the roof they've they've actually got to have a roof safety kit. Mate do you want something that'll get it down a lot quicker? Yeah if you've got something. Oh bring out the big guns mate. What Hodgie? No no no no no something works harder than that. Ready on the roof. This is a serious tool. The jaws of light. The SES use it all the time and it could actually save your life. All right we're through. All right step back. Guys let's push it away from the house. Yeah clear. How good is this? Awesome eh? Fantastic idea. Mate I couldn't find these in the toolbox. No need for that Jase. We had the jaws of life mate. Swap ya. No way no he's better. All right well done ladies. Yeah well done. Let's Good job. The roof's made out of aluminium so there's probably 100 bucks in there if we can get it down to the local recycle yard. Thanks for showing us the jaws of life. I had a bit of fun with it but I know that you do some pretty serious things with it. Thanks for looking after us today but thanks for looking after us every day. Make sure he's come back in the arvo and we'll have a barbie. Thank you ladies. With the demolition done we can get on with some building. To modernize this entrance I'm going to cover these old daggy tiles with some decking and also have a seat coming off a landing facing the new entertainment area. But I need something to nail the decking boards down to so I'll be putting down some battens first. You had a tree you can see that the roots have come through here they've lifted that up. Yep. Because when they've stump grinded over there they obviously couldn't stump grind underneath here. No not at all. There'll be a nice big chunk of wood under there somewhere. I'll have to get that out. This is super common with trees next to driveways and if this was a concrete slab very expensive to fix but we're lucky here as you can just lift the pavers but be careful not to break them. Because these tiles are fixed down firmly I can screw the battens directly to them. Now a good tip is to make the hole big enough not only for the screw head but so you can fit the socket in there as well. I think Jason's got to the root of the problem. Exhibit A. There's your culprit. Wow. Oh it's the tree that just keeps on giving. There she goes. I was going to lift about 10 pavers. I've lifted about 10 metres. And while Jason destroys the front yard I'm improving the front porch. This mobile decking will look really classy. One of the problems when you repair something is it looks bright and new. You can see my mortar joint here is completely different to the existing stuff. So just as it dries what I can do is sprinkle over some dirt, rub it in a bit and give it a bit of age. This entrance is really starting to look inviting. No more daggy old tiles and I reckon it's going to blend in perfectly with the new entertainment area. Before we get stuck into adding a pergola there's a few things we need to consider. We want it to be an extension of a house coming off the living areas. We don't want it to look like an eyesore so we're trying to existing colours as close as possible and that's why we've gone with the Calabon pergola in classic cream. So I've called in the experts to give me a hand so I know the job's going to be done right. And it's amazing just how fast they can go up. Once it's all square the posts are concreted in and then the all-important roof panels. I'll tell you what guys this is looking fantastic. You're going to add heaps of value to this. Yeah it sure is mate. Calabon steel is super strong and it's got anti-corrosive properties that will protect this home for years to come. That's fantastic. That means Liz and Matt can enjoy many a party with the SES crew. Absolutely. Looking good. Now I can add a second set of stairs which will be a more direct route to the pizza oven. And then our additional seating. Nice. Good hey. It ties the two areas in and if you're having a function you can move it over there and maybe use this as a seat still. Yeah true. And then use that one. That's it. Is it going to pass or what? Clever kid. We've been hard at work creating an outdoor room for Matt and Liz. The new pergola's up but I still want to create some privacy for my neighbours, the bins and this ugly wire fence. And I have just the perfect screen in mind. And it's also made by Calabon. Dig your first post hole then use the bottom rail as a guide for the next one. Then just get your posts leveled, concrete them in and here's the really good part. The rails just slide into the posts. Best thing about this screen is it's very DIY friendly. It's simple to put together and it doesn't take up much room. And I think it's going to go perfect in our new modern entertainment area. Mate nice screen. It's good. It's softer than a fence but still gives you the privacy. Now what I'm thinking is we need to go all the way around and block off the street. Mate it seems like you had a bit of work today. Yeah well I'll show you how to dig holes. What you do is you grab a two handed shovel. No seriously I've got another idea for a screen at the front. But first a bit of recycling. I think I better keep this. I need to widen the little existing garden bed because those sleepers, well they're going to be my screen. What I'm going to do is dig individual holes and have them staggered through here. So when you square on you won't see the street much. Now remember that tree root we dug up earlier that was destroying the paving? Well guess what? It's not the only one. Crikey what have we got here? Righto, should come out. Probably the biggest tree root I've ever had the misfortune to meet. Good work Benny. When's Defo to go? So these guys are going to be staggered. I'm going old school. I'm going to ram the earth. It's not structural. It's only holding up the timber. It won't be a problem. The trick is just put a little bit of soil in at a time and if the soil is mixed in with clay it'll sit nice and hard. Now I just need to work on their height. It's much easier to get that random look by cutting the post after they've gone in the ground. This is a screen, an artwork and a garden bed. And I love using black because it makes the plants really stand out. Now it's time for my favourite part. Adding the plants. We could have put the screen the whole way across but it'd look a bit like a compound. So to soften it and to tie it all in we've got to plant out these gaps that we've deliberately left. Now this is a Camellia Sasenqua. It's called Setsugeka. It's prolific white flowers. It's a great little plant. If you feed them, water them and make sure the soil is well drained there's no reason that they shouldn't fill this space in a year or two. When it comes to putting most plants in their ground you can be a little bit robust. They're surprisingly hardy but things like hydrangeas, well they don't like being bashed around. A couple of things you should definitely do. Take off the tags because all these sharp edges, well they're just going to cut the leaves and this is going to choke one of the branches. This one is called Endless Summer. I like it because it flowers for about 10 months of the year. It's beautiful and easy to look after. If I had to give this plant palette a name I'd probably call it Classic Modern Country. Classic planting but then you've got modern things around it and the two sit together really well. It's a bit like yin and yang. This one here is called Goura, or Butterfly Plant. You can see why because all the little flower heads look like butterflies when you've got a breeze. And this beautiful little grass that we're planting, well it's the same Diatis that we dug out on the corner. So you can see how much it's going to fill this space. Along this fence I'm going to screen it off with these four magnolia little gems and yes it's going straight into this crushed granite. But what we're going to do is fake it a little bit. We're going to put them in, surround them with fantastic soil and then just skim over the top ever so lightly with crushed granite and not compact it. That way when it rains or when you water it they can still get a drink. Yep, I reckon Jason and I have created a great space and a fun place to sit and relax. I reckon it's a real winner. I'll grab Matt and Liz. Oh my god, that's amazing. That's so gorgeous. Because Matt and Liz both spend so much time volunteering for the SES and raising a family, this backyard never stood a chance. Now it's somewhere to be proud of. You like it? Oh my god, I love it. I absolutely love it. I mean we don't even have a dining room inside so we've got like a whole extra room. We've completely rescued this boring hot box of a backyard. Oh it reminds me of my dad's garden. It's got all the same cottagey plants in it that makes his place the cottage. I love it. And with this new pergola you not only get shade but you get protection from the rain. That's beautiful. And you can come out here on a sticky hot day and you can come out here when it's cloudy and you can come out here every day. It is an extra outdoor room. It's really not the weekend retreat until you've christened it. Absolutely. So let's get back to the SES guys and hope this pulls down. Yeah, awesome. Have a bit of a shindig. That is spectacular. Huge difference. Absolutely awesome. They've done a top job. Excellent job. Yeah. You're a lucky man. It's better with people a little bit different. I was just saying I love the deck. I admire a good deck and that is awesome. Well this is a practical space but it's not really inviting. To me it looks more like a car park than an entertaining area but the good news is I reckon in one day I can turn it into a real outdoor destination and with any luck might even be having a party here tonight. To create some privacy we're building a screen made out of decking boards. I'm using metal screws to fix these links to the existing posts but I'll need a couple more for extra support. Now as far as posts go, primed pine is the Rolls Royce. It's nice and smooth. Painted up it looks a million bucks. It's also straight and free of defects like knots and bows. Now this foliage here is a dracaena. A few of these branches are breaking up where my boards are going to go so I can easily take cuttings, remove the whole branch and where I cut it off it will reshoot just like this here creating new plants and thicker foliage to screen off this area even more from the neighbours and this little guy all I got to do is stick it in the ground somewhere else in the garden and I guarantee you it'll grow. Because we're running the screen up the wall and along the ceiling we're attaching a few extra beams to stop the job sagging. Right, time to put some boards up. It's important you get your first course level and then work off it with spacers to go up the wall. Now we're using treated pine. It's light and it's cheap but it looks a million bucks when you put a coat of stain on it. Thanks Dan. I might leave you and Stu to do the rest of the boards. We're going to play with some plants. So to bring that very high ceiling down and make it more interesting I'm going to put up some hanging baskets. I'm going to dress them up give them a nice uniform look. All I need to do put some drainage holes in it. A little pop filter like this will stop any soil or potting mix dripping on your guests. You'll need to drill three chain holes around the edge of each of the pots but be sure to put the plant in first that way you won't be wrestling with the chain. Voila and it's only going to look better the more this drapes down. Now we're going to put them in a line all at different heights creating another point of interest. But to jazz up the floor we've gone for different heights just to create a little bit of interest. And if you look at the plants there's a subtle overtones of whites and greys. That means they can handle a bit of heat and nine times out of ten a bit of stress when it comes to drought and that's what you want in pots. We've got variegated liriope, a little short version of mother-in-law's tongue and a cute little euphorbia called diamond frost. And we're done. What a difference. This used to look like a carport now it looks like a very stylish spot. The timber screens on the ceiling and the wall have made all the difference and then all the greys we've used have made this a really sophisticated space. So no car space anymore just a place to really relax and enjoy the company of your friends. Australians love outdoor living. Unfortunately the weather can sometimes play havoc with our plans whether it's blistering sunshine or pelting rain but there is a way that you can enjoy your outdoor area no matter what the weather and the answer is a pergola. This one is going to go across the back of the house 5.4 metres and come out into the yard 5.4 metres. That is pretty big. Now as a rule of thumb anything that comes off the house more than about three and a half metres wants to have a post either side and another beam through the middle to help carry the raft of timbers. If you are going to undertake a job like this you want to make sure you check with the council first. It is likely that you'll need a development approval. I've got a stirrup going into each hole that will just hold the post up off the ground. I have used regular concrete it's a lot better quality than your quick set concrete and you've got a lot more time to get those stirrups just right. While the concrete's drying I can start cutting some timber and get a plate on the wall. Attaching the plate to the wall with masonry screws at least one every 600 millimetres. I'm cutting a groove in the wall of the house for a flashing. I'm resting the grinder on a block of timber that's sitting on top of my wall plate. That allows the grinder to sit very steady at the right height for a nice clean line. I'm painting all the pergola timbers white just to match the trim of the house and it is a lot easier to paint them all now while they're down on the ground. The posts are up but I do need to find a level point on each and on the wall of the house that I can use as a reference. The key is to use a water level. It's basically a clear hose with water in it. Because water finds its own level I can just put one end of the hose against the house, thanks Daz, the other end against one of the posts and when the water stops moving around I mark the position of level and then I can move the other end of the hose anywhere I like and mark that same level point at any position. Now it is very important that when rain hits your pergola roof it runs away from the house. To do that you need force. That means the roof's sitting 200 millimetres lower where it hits your end post than where it comes off the house. One big beam in the centre between my two posts that's going to carry the load of my rafters in the middle of the roof and stop them sagging. A block attached to the post with the clamps like having an extra set of hands when you're doing this. Oh hello, they're both free. So I can achieve as much height as possible I've got the beam at the same level as the rafters. In the middle there they go over the top but here the reason I can do this is because I've got this plate attached to the beam that sets the height of the rafter and also gives the underside plenty of support. Now that the rafters are on I'm laying some ply sheeting over the top. It's only five mil thick but it does a couple of things. Looking up I've got a nice tidy ceiling with exposed rafters. Looks quite good. And up here well at the moment you can see that there's nothing bracing this frame. It's quite wobbly so by nailing the ply to the top of the rafter you brace it. Beautiful. We put on our ply sheeting either side of the pergola leaving this section open to let just the right amount of sunshine through. There will be a roof sheet on this part but it's going to be a pearl translucent. Keep the skylight going around. Time for some roof battens. Now these are going across the line of the roof and give me somewhere to fix my roof sheeting too. Now I've attached all the gutter brackets to this fascia piece. Before I put it up that way fitting the gutter is just a matter of clipping it in. A very important part of roofing is where the roof meets the house. Now I've got a block of timber with a slot cut in it which is perfect for crimping up the end of these sheets. That makes sure that water can't just blow up over them easily. You combine that with a properly fixed flashing up top. You can stand your back door dry as you like. Well how good is this? For under three and a half thousand dollars worth of materials, you've got yourself a massive breezy outdoor entertaining area that you can use all year round. You've also cut direct sunlight off the windows of the house so it's a lot cooler inside as well. Well that's a couple big boxes ticked but there is still one more to go and that is to say thank you to your mates for all their help. Grubs on guys. How's that for you, Clifford? Yeah, good thanks.