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.
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.
