Paid $380 for a cedar pergola kit, now I'm tearing it down

The wood looked great in the box but started warping within 3 weeks here in Portland. The brackets were cheap aluminum too, so the whole thing wobbles when the wind picks up. Anyone had better luck with building one from scratch using lumber from a local yard?

2 comments

2 Comments

west.richard1mo ago

Aw man, a buddy of mine went through the exact same thing. He bought a kit from one of those big box stores, thought he was saving time. By October the whole top was starting to look like a potato chip, and he had to brace it with steel posts he had lying around from an old fence job. He ended up taking it apart and rebuilding it with rough-sawn cedar from a mill about an hour out of town. He said the lumber cost more but the frame is still straight two years later, and the brackets he bolted on are solid steel. He keeps telling me the only thing the kit was good for was the hardware, which he reused.

spencer_coleman1mo ago

...and honestly that tracks with so much of what I see now. It feels like everything is built to get you through the first season, then you're on your own. I've watched neighbors replace their deck boards every other summer with the pressure treated stuff from the home center, while my dad's fence he put up in the 90s with plain cedar is still standing. Same with appliances, furniture, even the way companies push you to buy a new phone every two years instead of fixing the one you have. Nobody wants to make stuff that lasts anymore because then you'd only buy it once. Your buddy figured out the hard way that the real savings come from spending a little more upfront and never thinking about it again. Most folks won't do that math though, they just want the cheap number on the receipt today.