Pergola

When I bought my home in 2000, I inherited a great deal of failing retaining walls made of old-fashioned true 2 inch thick by 20 foot redwood boards. After repairing the entire 100-foot area with a friend who had cashed out of the 2004 dot.com boom, they failed again. This time I removed them, soaked them in perhypochlorate, then hand scrubbed off the forty years of grime and dirt and discoloration with a metal hand brush to restore redwood color, and stained them in clear coat. I then cut each board down the middle and then cut each length of the 24 boards to size and affixed them with metal hangars, echoing the new style of open pergolas at Stanford. How do home construction projects become artisan aesthetic efforts to regenerate the history of the wood in the home and display it anew in a celebratory place to gather and barbecue and drink espresso in the morning?