Searching for Serenity: Part 2

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As promised, today I am bringing you part two of the post that I started yesterday. If you want to get caught up, you can check it out here. While most people were out camping or swimming or hanging out with friends for the 4th of July weekend, @mrsbozz and I were home setting up a new gazebo we had purchased off Wayfair.

The two of us have a sort of unspoken agreement that we try to avoid camping over the 4th of July. Due to it being a major holiday, the traffic is always horrible and most campgrounds get overrun with drunken twats doing pretty much whatever they want. It's not a very relaxing experience, so as lame as it feels sometimes, it's often better just staying home.

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After the three hours we spent working on Thursday morning to get the frame set up, on Friday morning we started tackling the roof panels. There was some more cross supports we had to install and then we could start attaching the panels. This process actually went relatively smoothly and the panels are all labeled, so you knew exactly which one went in each position.

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After a couple hours of work, we had about half the panels on. As I said, it was fairly easy and we only had to take one panel off once so I could have a hole to crawl through and attach one of the other panels. We were able to manage with just two six foot ladders which kind of surprised me.

Eventually, it started getting hotter out and we ran into a snag with one of the panels. It wasn't quite fitting right and we were both getting a little frustrated with the other, so we decided to call it quits for the day and take care of some other stuff we had on our schedule.

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@mrsbozz went to her parents to do some cleaning for them and I went to my parents to fix a light switch they were having some issues with.

I got lucky and the hardware store was still open even though it was the 4th of July holiday. After a couple of hours and a grilled burger as payment I was on my way back home.

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Although we had both agreed that it was too hot to work on the gazebo some more, the idea of leaving it almost finished was driving us crazy. There was a point where we just looked at each other and at the same time we said "let's finish this".

If I had to pick the hardest part of the whole thing, it was probably the flashing that went on the end of the roof panels. Getting that to slide in properly was pretty frustrating given how the metal panels were corrugated.

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If I had it to do over again, I would probably choose a cloudier day to put this thing together. With the sun on full blast, the metal roof panels got very hot and that made them difficult to work with. @mrsbozz had to keep shifting them to the shade to make them cool enough for me to handle. As you can see, we left two on the grass for just a little too long and the heat from the sun burned the grass underneath!

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After about seven hours of work across two days, we finally had the whole thing assembled. Looking back, if the weather hadn't been quite so hot, and knowing now what I didn't know then, I think we could shave an hour or two off our time. Unlike many of the things like this that you buy online, this one went together fairly easily.

Plus it looks dang good on our deck!

My biggest fear is that you would hit your head on the edge of the roof as you were coming down from the steps out of our house, but as you can see in the top photo above, there is plenty of room. @mrsbozz already has some plans for some accessories to add to the gazebo that I will post about once we have them in place.

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To celebrate I grilled some tasty jalapeno cheddar burgers for dinner along with some chicken and a chicken burger. As I was tending to the grill, I had this amazing Walking Taco Mexican style lager that my nieces got me for my birthday. It's from a brewery in Columbus, OH that the people down the street from them own. It was so refreshing on such a hot day. It's basically a Corona and lime with the lime already added. Amazing stuff!

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As we were sitting there, I sent some photos of our finished work to my buddy @a4xjeeper to show him what we had accomplished. I think he was impressed, and he pointed out that we should probably get some boards under the legs sooner rather than later to keep the composite decking from bowing in the heat. Over the next couple of days I ran to the lumber yard and purchased a couple 2 inch by 8 inch by 10 foot pieces of pressure treated wood.

I cut them down to length and then screwed the pieces together to make a block. I then had the fun experience of crawling under the deck and screwing the blocks into place between the joists where each of the legs rested on the deck.

This actually served two purposes, it gave me extra support for the legs, but it also gave me something solid to screw some lag screws into to hopefully secure down the gazebo when storms roll through.

As we were camping last weekend, I'm really looking forward to taking advantage of the cooler weather this weekend and spending some time in our new oasis!