Pergola Day 12 - First Beam Installed

 We brought the neighborhood over today to help hang the first beam. Benton, Henry, Oliver, and Ryan met up at our house at 1:00 PM. We started off by carrying the beam over to our neighbor's yard. From there we spent some time talking about the best strategy for lifting the beam into the air.

We came up with the idea of pre-drilling a hole at one end and lifting up one corner and temporarily bolting it. 

The project took a lot of coordination and patience. Part of the challange was moving the beam up and down over the fenceline.

We had a team of people holding the beam while I used the impact wrench to drive large bolts through the posts and into the beams.

After a couple of tries, we were able to successfully mount the first of the two beams. 

The next step is to to prep the support posts and joists along the north side of the pergola. Once these are ready for install, we will calendar a time for the team to come back and help install the second beam along the west side. In some ways it should be easier because there is no fence to deal with. But it may be a little more complicated because of the floating corner we have in the design. Hopefully we have the entire substructure completed by next weekend.