umbrella-gazebo garden structure 2 -- a work in progress


It doesn't look like much yet.
You can barely see the fence wire form, which is almost complete, in the bottom photograph.
All but the center post, which is just a 10 ft. 4x4, are made the same way as the armature for the totem pole shown in an earlier post. I had doubts about making the armature this way, thinking I had to wrap a whole 4x4 post with hardware cloth to get a sturdy armature, but the finished totem pole seems incredibly strong, and I was inspired to make the posts for this project the same way.
Especially since the "key stone" of this structure is the center post anyway.
On the papercrete post, the hardware cloth is tacked to a three foot piece of 4x4 with fence nails. The post extends into the hardware cloth tube approximately one foot, so there are two feet of bare wood at the bottom. The posts are then set so that the hardware cloth is about an inch above ground level. I can go directly over the hardware cloth with papercrete.
For the center support, I bored a hole in one end of the 4x4 just big and deep enough for what remained of the umbrella shaft. Once the post was set and the umbrella was in place, I drilled across in two directions and bolted the shaft in.
My plan is to cover the fence wire that makes up the rest of the armature with chickenwire and daub the papercrete on. The umbrella roof won't be covered with papercrete, but will need a few more coats of the latex-cement mixture.


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