Transcending from the ground up

The Pavilion of Transcendence: This was our goal. Actually I thought anything with a roof that would not be out of place in a Chinese garden would have done. For a decade we had been talking about this, we even built a little hill in the backyard to hold it. But nothing ever got started.

Till finally, in 2009, a plan took hold. It may have been my mid-life bicycle trip that cemented it, or the fact that we found someone we were excited about working on the landscape with, or maybe it was just time. Whatever the reason we got ready. First step, a building permit.

The town wanted plans for our “gazebo,” suggesting I might find something at Home Depot. That seemed a little bit unlikely to me, so I studied a couple of Chinese books my wife had found on building pavilions, bought a copy of TurboCad and created some drawings of my own.

These did the trick for the town, though they certainly would not count as true blueprints. The only change they imposed was the requirement that the posts go down four feet instead of 42 inches. Oh well, more digging for me.

Finding the posts, as it turns out, was a bit of a challenge. Shorter than telephone poles, these sometimes go by the name barn poles, but nobody in Massachusetts had them, and most people I called simply did not know what they were. I must have spent a day on the phone, till I finally found a place in Texas capable of shipping them to me. The poles themselves were not very expensive, but the shipping was quite a hit. Still, Federal Express Freight really did come through. The fellow who delivered the poles was baffled as to why someone would want them, but didn't hesitate to muscle them out of his truck with me and then, with exceptional grace, refused to take a tip.

Meanwhile John, our landscape artist, had made a start on the pond the pavilion would overlook. With the shell in place, and the poles on site, it was time for me to get to work.

At one point John asked how long it would take me to get the structure up and more or less in shape. Nonchalantly I replied three weeks. That wasn’t quite right. There was no phase of this project that took anything like the amount of time I expected. Even applying my old rule of thumb of moving to the next higher units of measure (months) and doubling (6) was not nearly enough. In three weeks, I had managed to get up most of the poles.

While I thought digging the holes for the posts would be hard and time consuming, it turns out that dropping them into the holes was the toughest part.

Each pole weighs about 180 pounds, and I was not able to simply lift one up and drop it in. Instead I would lay them down flat, then slowly move a truss up the pole till it was tilting at about 45 degrees. Then I would push the pole up, and into the hole. I saved myself the embarrassment of having any pictures taken of that process.

One fun thing I did learn about moving the poles around: an old bicycle tire is a great way to grab an end and drag it. Rolling also works, though it is tough to change direction.

Next – a roof in the garage.