What's the point of a pergola? (floor, roof, windows, painting)
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I suppose it's aesthetics. Gives partial shade, and your outside sitting area looks more finished. You plant some flowering vines and it looks pretty. Attracts butterflies.... and bees
I prefer gazebo, thought....
They only provide partial shade. They don't keep you dry. I suppose it would be ok if there were enough vines growing on it.
Do you have one? Do you like it?
Not only that, they'll eventually require repair and/or painting. Two of the three houses we've bought came with pergolas in some form. I think they're stupid, and you described the exact reasons; they're like a roadway about the width of a decent bike path. A little more work and they'd be worth something, but as they are, extra maintenance for zero gain. If this house had come with one I would have dismantled it two years ago.
I like pergolas for aesthetic reasons, but more as a way to define an entrance/passage or seating area. But, if I'm going to build an outdoor structure in the middle of a field or yard, I'd rather build a gazebo.
Done right they will last as long as the house. Ours define space.
Last house had three: covered with limited UV protection for lounge chairs off the "living room w/fire place" under the roof, one out in the garden to anchor the view of 1/2 acre flat garden, covered with sunbrella fabric including roll up shades on the sides (30x30), one to cover a swim spa in a hail prone area and heavy UP protection on top.
Downsized: about 15x30 massive cedar, defines living space on 2k sqf patio (house is 2.5k sqf), clear cover holds a lot of weather off the bedroom windows, fairly good patio have extended life spans, we can use the area in 100F and in 10F. Plan B is turning bedroom windows into a huge sliding door as we did in Alabama but it means structural changes. Next year:>)
A friend of mine had one where he had grown grape vines up and around it. It was lovely. Nice at night for a dinner party too as you can hang lights from it.
A friend of mine had one where he had grown grape vines up and around it. It was lovely. Nice at night for a dinner party too as you can hang lights from it.
Ok, but I can hang lights from a patio roof too, and I won't get wet when it rains.
My pergola is built with the horizontal slats on the top angled to block the mid- to late-afternoon sun (and it has a roll-down sun shade on the west side). It also has decorative lights that hang from it, as there is nowhere else to hang them otherwise, unless I wanted to run them from the side of the house to the fence and they'd hang too low. The pergola is nice because it defines the space on the deck, adds shade in the summer
In the hot late July days, I also have a shade cloth that fastens over the top of the pergola and blocks even more sun (which also shades that part of the house). At my previous house, which had a lot of high-altitude southern sun exposure, the narrow pergolas ran across the south side of the bottom floor of the house and I used heavier shade cloth to keep the sun off the southern windows. Made it cooler inside while still leaving it fairly bright inside.
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