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Dropped $340 on a pergola kit from the big box store and it was a huge mistake
Last spring I bought one of those cedar pergola kits that come in a box for $340 at the store in Tacoma. The listing photos made it look solid but the posts were basically 4x4 cedar and the beams flexed as soon as we got them up. Two of the corner braces split during assembly and the hardware was soft enough that I stripped three bolts with a normal wrench. I ended up spending another $180 on better brackets and a gallon of sealer just to keep it from wobbling in the wind. My neighbor built his own from rough cut cedar for about $260 and his is still rock solid. Has anyone here built a pergola from scratch and actually saved money, or did I just buy the wrong thing?
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noah83813d ago
Did you price out the lumber before you bought the kit? I always figured the boxed ones were the cheaper way to go since you get everything cut and drilled already, but after reading this I'm not so sure. The part about the soft hardware really gets me, because stripping bolts with a normal wrench means it was junk metal, and that's the kind of thing you can't tell from the listing photos. Sounds like you paid twice, once for the kit and again to fix it, so scratch building probably would've come out ahead even at $260.
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