Modern Design Cedar Carport

I bought a 1967 Camaro. I don't have room in the garage for it. So I built it a house, next to our house. Lol.

Here's the mullet I purchased as an accessory for my Camaro.

I looked into having someone else do it but ultimately found I could do it cheaper on my own, but not without many hours of labor. Overall cost is about $2,500-$3000. This includes all the cedar (relatively expensive), equipment rental (post-hole digger), roofing, decomposed granite for the surface and a multitude of hardware purchases. A car port like this is easily $8-10,000 if done by a professional.

I did not start with any written plans. I knew how big I wanted it to be and designed as I went. Not always the best plan if you aren't good with spacial reasoning, but that's how I've always operated.

Oh, and buy a very long (6" level). Check level constantly.

HERE'S HOW IT WENT DOWN.

Step one: Pick a spot, measure it and level it.

Our overall driveway is basically a "T". So you are looking at the top of the "T", with one short branch coming off to the right and one to the left, toward the house. My overall footprint was 12" x 20" as I wanted plenty of room but also wanted to keep the car away from the drip line. You can see there's a bit of a slope that goes downhill right to left. I leveled that with a small Honda tiller. It is also slightly sloped front to back. I left that grade as-is because it simply continued the overall grade of the driveway all the way out to the street. It's probably a 2-3 degree slope.

Of utmost importance at this point is to make sure the layout is PERFECTLY SQUARE. So make sure you not only measure all four sides, but also the diagonals. This will tell you if you're off. 

I opted not to pour a slab for two reasons: one, our overall driveway is rocks as you can see and two, we have several nearby Red Oaks, which are notoriously touchy. So I wanted to impact them as little as possible. So in order to secure the posts to the ground, I dug 2-3 ft deep holes with a beast of a machine called a post-hole digger. This machine is your greatest ally but if you are not careful it will cut your leg off. Be careful and read the instructions.

There are choices. The choice is very easy. USE THIS POST HOLE DIGGER:

Relatively easy to use.

NOT THIS ONE:

You will die.

Anyway, here's what the finished pillar looks like. 

I've skipped ahead a bit, but you can see I used the tubes you can buy at Lowes or Home Depot to set the concrete bases for the posts. I chose to mount the posts on top of the concrete and secure them with anchors instead of putting them directly into the concrete. There are pros and cons to this approach:

Pros: 

1. The anchors are secured via one large bolt that you imbed in the concrete. They are then adjustable when mounted so that you can get them perfectly square to the structure. They also keep the wood off of the ground (even though my pillars were already pretty far off the ground).

2. They leave room for error as you can always remove the posts to make adjustments, etc. 

Cons:

1. They allow for some movement and are not completely steady until secured to the rest of the structure. I found this annoying, but once the entire thing was built, this was not a problem.

2. You have to drill perfectly straight holes through your poles so that the bolts go through the bracket squarely and come through the other side. I used a drill press and a level to achieve this. 

I'm happy with the end result. I used 5-6 bags of concrete to secure each post, so between 200-280 lbs of cement per pillar. This thing isn't going anywhere. CHECK LEVEL.

Helps to have help to get the big pieces of lumber up. Here's the basic frame. I put posts at 0 feet, 10 feet and 15 feet so that I would have a nice cantilevered effect (a 5' roof overhang). 

You can see my giant red level sitting on the beam at the back left. It's huge. 

The posts are 6 x 6 x 12 (cut to a height that I related directly to the lines of the house so that the lines of the car port are continuous with the home. The overall height at the front is about 10' and at the back a little less due to the slope. The structure however, is completely level despite the grade of the land.

An upstairs portion of the house is visible here through the structure. You are seeing the large galvanized bolts going through the side structure of the carport. Each top rail is composed of 2 2x8x20 cedar planks. Adds strength and a nice robust look. Here I've also installed the brackets for the 2x4x12 roof supports. I have yet to tighten down the bolts on the structure. Always a good idea to leave those loose until you are sure about what you're doing. 

The two bolts go to the beam on the side. The single bolt secures the back beam.

You've heard the saying "measure twice, cut once." Well the same applies to level. Check your level numerous times before you tack the horizontal supports up (a single large nail did it here so we could drill the bolt holes).  Here it is with the roof beams in.

Hey there's my giant red level right up front. Look at that sexy thing.

Close up:

Apparently people used to put french lace on their fences.

Next step is roofing. I was torn between doing corrugated metal or some sort of polycarbonate. Generally I like the look of metal better and I was very close to purchasing it. Ultimately I went with polycarbonate from SunTop. This is a "foamed" polycarbonate which means extremely strong and lightweight. I picked the castle grey color which is opaque. It cost $26/sheet (26" x 12'). I purchased 11 sheets. 

I installed my roofing with the corrugation flowing from left to right rather than front to back as this prevents water from streaming off in the front of the car port. In order to do that, I added "purlins" which are simply smaller wood strips you screw the roof into. 

Purlins!

Exciting. Anyway, SunTop sells these wavy little brackets that you place under the polycarbonate to help align them, give the ridges strength and provide a surface to screw into. They look like this:

There exists on the internet a very acrimonious debate (as always) as to whether or not a screwed down corrugated roof should have screws at the top (or peak) of the ridges or in the valleys between. The answer for this product at least is that the screws (with built in rubber washers) go on the peaks. Time consuming but quite easy. Roof in progress:

That's a lot of screwing.

I suppose I could have snapped a chalk line to get the screws on top perfectly straight, but they were all on target and who sees the top of the roof anyway? Screw it. lol. You insert screws on the first ridge of the sheet and then screw every other ridge until you are at the last ridge, at which time you put down a line of exterior caulking (silicon) before overlaying the next sheet on the last ridge. The manufacturer provides moderately understandable instructions at the website linked above.  Here's the underside after the roof was put on:

I have two ladders. Haters gonna hate.

I don't know if you know this, but car ports are not weather tight. I wanted the roof of this car port to be high in order to match the aesthetic of the home but also to permit all manner of vehicles up to the largest SUVs in case anyone with such a vehicle ever comes over. The trade off is that the higher the roof is, the more weather can come in from the sides. I wanted a solution that would block weather but also give me the option of opening the sides up or removing them if I wanted to. I haven't ever seen another car port in real life or on the internet that has this feature. Maybe it will catch on. Looks sweet anyway. And functional!!! 

There's my level at the back again, photobombing.

The back of the carport has a permanent wall fashioned from 8 1/2x6x12 cedar planks. The sides are another story. As you can see, there are two sections on the sides: a ten foot section of wall and a five foot section (the distances between the posts). I built those out of cedar siding secured with decking screws to 2x4s. They are light enough to be lifted by one person (me). Each 2x4 has a heavy duty eyelet screwed into the end of it. The carport has the same eyelet screwed into the structure above. Connecting the two is a small single link of stainless with a screw-open feature (like an inexpensive carabiner). So the walls are literally hanging from the structure.

Engineering genius.

These walls can be removed or folded up and secured to the underside of the roof using a similar hook/eyelet rig that I have yet to install. To keep the walls from blowing around in the wind, they are each secured with simple latches. 

Dulce de Latches.

Now the carport has a roof and walls that extend down almost 5 feet. That will help with water and wind significantly. It's wide enough overall to prevent most moisture from getting to the car's body.

Lastly I added 2.5 cubic yards of decomposed granite to finish the look and again to allow for drainage for the Red Oak trees.

Finished shots:

Leveling was key here as you can see there's a slight slope of the land over which the carport is built. The granite surface under the carport is level with the structure. 

At the foot of the post nearest the camera is my bottle of pure DEET. You're gonna need that if you do this in Texas during the Summer like I did. Now off to get my cancer screening.

Even though the hanging panels inside are separate from each other, they line up perfectly. Very pleasing aesthetically. Stained with Behr Premium Deck/Fence Stain #500 Naturaltone. I couldn't find any good plans, photos or designs for modern car ports that I liked on the net. Most of them you have to pay for. This ain't a house! Who pays for carport plans?!? So now you have my design. Hope this is helpful for DIYers. 

Steel Vegetable Garden/Retaining Wall

Until this point the yard beside our house dropped fairly severely to the street. The ground underneath the overhang of the house on that side wouldn't grow grass or much else due to the shade and dirt quality (or lack thereof). So we decided to extend the ground from the base of that wall out at level about 14 feet for the entire length of the wall (30 feet). We did a sunlight test with our Plantsmart soil and sunlight measurement tool thingy. We made sure to design the planter so that the leading edge was well into the area the sunlight analysis thingy said would foster veggie growth.

The guys that we got to do the work did just excellent work in reinforcing the wall substantially more than was required, with tube steel and concrete anchors. But better safe than sorry.


We raised the sprinkler system up into the box with enough heads to give a full watering in a short 5-10 minutes. On the far side metal stair frames were built and filled with gravel.

The steps are now topped with decomposed granite (that orang-y mashed up rock you see at hipster-centric, yet lovely indoor-outdoor xeriscaped restaurants). The finished box has layers of gravel, sand and vegi-mix soil at the top. Today we planted marigolds and sweet potato vine at the front for color and bug repellent, tomatoes, basil, chives, bell peppers, strawberries, carrots, and different lettuces for eating, rosemary, lavender, hyssop and borage for more bug control, eating and complimenting each other.

The box will quickly oxidize leaving a beautiful orange-red rust all over. Should be gorgeous when that process completes.

The flora should fill in quickly as the Spring continues and we'll see what type of production we get from the veggies. Last year we got five ("5") cherry tomatoes...but that was a lifetime ago! NOW WE ARE ARMED WITH KNOWLEDGE FROM THE LITTLE COMPUTER FLOWER THAT TOLD US IT WAS TOTALLY COOL TO PLANT OUR TOMATOES RIGHT HERE!!!!!

Platform Bed

Getting a head start on preparations to plant some winter vegetables during this coming Fall (feels like it will never get here with temperatures well over 100 degrees for the last several weeks). I looked at some kits you can actually buy that are pre-cut, etc., but decided to just build my own. It's terribly easy and I was pleased with the results.

I was going for a 4' x 8' bed.

The materials are simple:

Six 1 x 6 x 8 cedar boards. They are rot resistant and last for a very long time.

Four 18" metal rods.

Tools: Hand or power saw, drill, tape measure.

I was unable to buy 18" metal rods, which are used to link the boards together at the corners, so I bought two 36" rods at 3/8" diameter and used my angle grinder to cut them in half. The results:

Exciting eh?

I had six cedar boards. Four would be used for the long sides of the bed and two would be cut in half for the short sides. To secure the boards together, I cut small brackets in each one as seen here.

...and here:

You can see that there are sections cut out of each end, but on opposite sides so each board looks like a really long "Z". You drill 3/4" holes through each "tab."

Next you clear some ground and level it. I used my little Honda tiller. Oooo, check out that real-estate. Sexy:


Puzzle all the pieces together, drop the rods through the holes and you're good. Because I want to extend the longevity of the cedar, I put it on a platform of rocks.


Check for level and you're all done. Boom.

Not Taking it for Pomegranate

One year ago we planted four "dwarf pomegranates" next to our house. They were about 2-3 feet tall when planted and after one year they range between 6-9 ft tall. Just amazing growth. This one is almost up to the underside of the roof.

Starting around March-April, the plants produce gorgeous bright orange blooms that become flowers and then start turning into the fruit.


Here's a little bundle of buds that will become flowers. The fruit start growing around May at the end of most branches. Despite being called a "dwarf" pomegranate for some reason, these plants produce full baseball-softball size fruit that is ready to pick in around October-November. Here's what it looks like right now, in early July:


We collect them up and get the juice out of them. I tried a variety of ways to harvest their juice. Asking them to release their juice was my first idea. Not only did they not let their juice out, but they didn't even talk back. Now, if you've seen a pomegranate on the inside, they have like a bazillion little fruit-coated seeds inside.
See? It would take at least four to five days to squeeze all the juice out of each of those individually. So what I do is cut each one in half and squeeze the half really hard so that all the juice is removed by force. There will be some little bits of seed and stuff in the juice that comes out, but you can easily use a strainer, sieve or clean underwear to filter it out and get just the juice. Most pomegranate juice is a little bitter, so we just add it to glasses of ice water for a refreshing drink loaded with anti-oxidants, which apparently are good for you in that they kill ugliness. That's right. If you drink stuff with anti-oxidants and you are ugly, they will either turn you beautiful or kill you. Cheers!

Modern Fence Gate

We have a small "side yard" off of our main back yard area. It has mulch in it, which is apparently catnip for dogs, of which we have four. We are doing some planting back there and decided that a gate had finally become necessary. We didn't want a full fence-height gate there, as it would tend to completely block in both of the areas it separated in a way that restricted the open style of the house and yard. So I took it upon myself to build this thing and am happy with the results. Since it's functional, but decorative, I made no attempt to copy the style of the fence it's up against other than to use the same type of wood: cedar. You can see the baby Yakuza Chinese Maple in the far background.

Here's a picture of the back of the gate. It is done in a very minimalist fashion. Since fences typically start to lean after a few years, I wanted this gate to be independent from the fence itself--so I anchored it to the house. This is the only area where there is a lot of metal hardware. I used masonry anchors and put them into the concrete foundation and the rock wall itself. That sucker will hold better than any wood post. I did place a post on the static side of the gate, but it bears almost no weight. While the gate extends all the way to the fence opposite the house, it is not secured to it. This allows for movement and shifting of the fence without hurting the gate. Lastly, I included a hidden latch that is not visible from the front and tucked away nicely in the back. I briefly considered hiring someone to do this job, but I don't believe most contractors would have taken the time to build it as seamlessly as I did--because it isn't their house. What I learned is that building something like this has very little to do with actual skill. The key is giving a crap and being patient. Here's what you have to know how to do to build a gate like this:
1. Saw wood. Cedar is rather soft and easy to saw. Even with a hand saw, which I used for all the boards.
2. Drill a hole. If you have a drill (a hammer drill is better for masonry, but any drill with a masonry bit will eventually do the trick) you can do this.
3. Know how to use a level. Here's how you do that: put the level on the surface you want level. Now watch the bubble. If it's in the middle, you win!
4. Know how to install a post. Here's how: dig a deep hole (a post digger tool helps), put the post in it. Then follow the directions on your 50 lb pound bag of cement (let me summarize those for you here: Step 1. Fill 1/3 of the hole with water. Step 2. Fill that water with cement. Step 3. Top up the hole with an even ratio of water and cement. Step 4. Check vertical and horizontal level of your post as cement sets (usually 30 minutes set time)). Total cost: About $100.

If you can master these simple tasks, you can build a great gate and be awesome like me!!!!!

Wintertime Flora

It's been a while since I've updated the blog and thusly I apologize sincerely to our many (two) blog followers.

So when last we talked, I'd taken down all of the perennial cover crop and had dug a swale. We then spread a mixture of perennial rye and New Zealand White clover from Peaceful Valley. Both, but especially the clover have taken amazingly.

The brown tufts are the recently pruned down red grass, fountain grass and feather grasses we also planted for additional erosion control and "texture". Whatever that means. It's pretty cool to have a bright green lawn in the middle of winter that isn't being enhanced with chemicals or engineered greenery. The clover is so great for a lawn because it needs no mowing, low to moderate water (in the hotter months only) and adds valuable nutrients to the soil. We pulled a few weeds out of the lawn and the upturned soil revealed a solid 2 inches of dark-chocolate colored dirt on top of the original clay that was there when we first moved in. Additionally, this ground cover took exceptionally well to the low point of the swale.

You can see the indention of the swale along the length of the yard. We've neglected to blow the leaves out of the yard from the fall, which explains some of the brown you see in the yard. Otherwise this yard is thickly covered with 5-6" of clover. It has taken beautifully to both sunny and shady areas.

During the summer we planted Palestine/Strawberry clover in the lot next to our house. It has also thrived wonderfully during the winter (even completely covered in leaves from the 5 oak trees in the yard).

Check it out:
So, basically, the clover is super resilient and would flourish even better if we were a little more on top of getting rid of the leaves in the yard.

Upcoming this spring: we're going to do a tree guild in the front yard centered around a live oak. In the lot next to us, we're going to perhaps do some fruit trees and stuff, but we'll see.

Save the Swales

With Fall upon us, we have to get moving on our transition from urban crop growers to landscapers. The cowpeas and buckwheat in the front yard are supposed to be taken down before they go to seed. I am incompetent so of course our cowpeas are already producing seed at a shocking rate. Letting them go this long will come back to haunt me.

Step 1: So I mowed down 4 foot tall plants in the front yard, readily scattering all the cowpea seeds and planting them nicely in the dirt which I later tilled (step 2). This was an error as it turns out, since two days later I had an entire yard of baby cowpea plants. So I repeat Step 2 and till up all these baby plants. Two days later the yard is somewhat less full of baby cowpea plants. Mkay. Gonna have to do this again.

You might have noticed that our yard is on a fairly steep slope. In order to prevent erosion and to retain water, one of our reference books recommends digging a "Swale." This is a lateral mound that you create through hours and hours of backbreaking labor. Below is a visual representation of what a swale looks like (I'll add my own photos later).
It serves a few purposes: one is to collect water which then slowly seeps into the ground where it is retained. Secondly it slows erosion. Ours looks a lot like this except sloppier.

We have numerous goals for our landscaping. One of the first is to plant a ground cover that meets a number of requirements: evergreen, heat and drought tolerance, durable and organic matter producing. We are going with a mixture of seed that we bought from Peaceful Valley Organics yet again. This one is part fescue, part perennial rye and part New Zealand White Clover. It's our expectation that this will stay pretty green until Summer kicks back in by next June/July, at which point we may need to overseed with some more clover, which is more heat tolerant than the rye or the fescue. We'll broadcast the seed next week and post updates.

Black Eyed (cow)Peas

Both our buckwheat and cowpeas we planted back in June are almost completely matured and ready for harvest. Now since we're using them to enrich the soil, we are not going to "harvest" the buckwheat or cowpeas (plus I don't own a combine). What we've found very interesting are the fact that both plants continue to bear fruit in cycles. The buckwheat blooms and then reblooms. The cowpeas grow several cycles of pods, as shown in this picture. As you can see, there are both "ripe" tan pods along side green yet-to-be-ripe pods on the same plant. Really cool that these plants continue to bear fruit over and over.

I was curious to shuck some of these bad boys and just see what I got. I spent about an hour and a half pulling these beans out of the pods and was amazed to realize that we actually grew food.


The hour + of work I did yielded about enough beans for two people to eat dinner and it's actually quite tedious work. Gives you a real appreciation for how people in the old school did it. Here's what I got:
I mean, there's enough of these beans on the lot to feed a whole family for a few months, I'd venture. I got this little basketfull of beans. I've decided to store them away as food for the inevitable mass-migrations that will occur as global warming continues to hasten its pace. See below for a visual representation of what I'm talking about.




While I don't actually think that we'll have a tidal wave, tornados over L.A. and a frozen Statue of Liberty over a nine hour period, I do believe global warming exists and that human kind is at least in part to blame (maybe completely to blame). Otherwise, I think the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" seems pretty accurate for what we're in for. So when the shit hits the fan, I'll have two servings of cowpeas all saved up, so ha ha.

Here's all the left over husks I dumped in my compost pile. Yeah. I compost. It's awesome to see the volume of crap you end up not throwing in the trash. Plus it gives you an "in" with indie chicks, so yeah. I compost.

Texas "Mountain" Laurels

I'm not sure how they got their name, but I love them. Texas Mountain Laurel is an evergreen shrub/tree that is very hardy (once established but a major pain to get to that point). It is known for the very beautiful and lovely-scented purple blooms it gets in Feb-March each year. Here's what they look like:

Anyway, I have a major obsession with these guys. In February I took seeds from one of my full-grown guys and attempted to start my own Texas Mountain Laurel nursery/farm in my backyard. I started with 23 of them and have lost about 8 since. These trees grow little seed pods in the spring. Inside those pods are rock-hard red beans. These are your seeds. Do not try to eat them. You will break a tooth.

Did I mention they are SLOW GROWING. Geez. The ones I've grown are about 6 months old and 3" tall. Ridiculous. Of course, this is why they are so expensive to buy if you get them at a fairly mature age. Here's the group I have now.The two guys on the front row didn't make it. I've notified their families.

The Sand Lot

We have another part of our property that was just beat to hell when the house was being built. The ground got so compacted that it looked like it'd never grow anything again. It was another one of those things I didn't take a picture of, but the following photo reenactment sums up what it looked like:
























We had a similar mission to our front yard: build soil and prevent erosion. Because this side yard area is covered with trees and due to the abundant shade, buckwheat was not an option. My wife, who likes to read, figured out that the perfect ground cover would be Strawberry, or Palestine, Clover. It is heat tolerant, builds soil well, grows moderately fast, and can even be mowed if one so desires. The seeds were again purchased from Peaceful Valley. These things look like poppy seeds, but sadly can't be made into street-grade heroine. We again tilled up the ground (hard in spots where there was just bare limestone, but I did my best to ruin the blades on my tiller) and then planted. Here's what it looks like after three weeks:

Now bear with me for a sec. Please understand that this used to look like a scene from the 70's D Movie Cannibal Holocaust. Allegedly the clover is supposed to grow quite thickly once it's established. Here's a closeup of the little guys:
They are a little slower growing than I'd like, but they are getting the job done. They stand up to being walked on and stuff (like when I have to move the sprinkler and whatnot). This will hopefully be our default ground cover once we decide what to do with our overall landscaping plan.