FSC Certified Cedar Wood Aluminum Roof 14' x 12' Outdoor Pavillion Gazebo

My husband, our teenage sons and myself (mostly my husband) built the Gazebo over a weekend. We bolted it to our wooden deck and it doesn’t budge.. it’s awesome, we love it!!!

If you have experience in carpentry or construction, this won't be too difficult to build. If all you have ever done is build IKEA stuff, you better get some help. There are a ton of pieces and the instruction manual is not always helpful. The videos online are a very useful resource when you get stumped by the instruction manual. My advice is to read through the entire 50 page manual, then lay everything out step by step and then read each step at least twice again before you go ahead, otherwise you will end up having to undo stuff and it will take forever. As others have stated, yes there are some bowed pieces, but you can work around that. Also keep in mind when you put the roof pieces on you need more than 1 person and some ladders to safely pull that off and best not do it in the wind as they are like huge sails! Other than that, it looks awesome when its completed and it is very sturdy, its not going to blow over in the wind. For the price, I don't think I could have went to the hardware store, purchased all the stuff, then cut the wood for any cheaper than I got it for. Great value, very nice looking product. Just be prepared to spend some time building it.

Bought this last weekend (Costco $1,300), worked with an expert handyman neighbor three nights for four hours and then Saturday with four good guys (one an expert contractor) for six final hours. Total labour on the order of 60 hours. We installed on a concrete slab, so no footings.As you can see, this is a big project. It's also a very nice pergola and an excellent kit. The boxes weigh in right at 700 lbs. You'll need two strong guys to carry boxes.Once open, everything fits very well. Some reviews complained that the wood was warped. Well, it's wood. That said, the wood was better than I could select at Home Depot -- nothing was out more than 3/16", and those were easily brought back into straight by the clever bolt assembly process. All of us were impressed by the kit quality -- miters aligned, cross pieces were accurately dadoed -- space was even left for slight misalignments.After you get it home, you can read the instructions that say it takes four people to put on the roof. They are not kidding. We had five strong, experienced guys and it went up without undue trouble in about half an hour. It would have been impossible with fewer, guys unless you have a few skyhooks. They are also not kidding about needing four ladders. It would have taken much longer except we had three excellent impact nut drivers -- strongly recommended.Free advice: Pay attention to which side of fascia boards to place nuts -- it wasn't easily understood by us. And carefully match screw lengths to instructions, we went blithely along using 2.5" screws where 1.25" were called for and had to remove and recover. Instructions are generally excellent, but could have used more clarification (for us, at least) in those two areas.Biggest trouble with this kit is that it looks so good and is so well put together that several friends are planing to buy it ... and they know that I'm an experienced worker!Recommended if you have the manpower.

Solid structure and Excellent quality and instructions are accurate and specific. That being said, if you are not experienced with building projects of this type, get some help. I was able to do this myself, except for raising the roof panels into place....I had three guys help me. Some helpful hints:1. I used Thompsons water seal on the four pillar frame before putting the roof on. I also water sealed the roof panel sections BEFORE I assembled the aluminum panels. Painting before final assembly was quite easy.2. I had two sides of the gazebo blocked by a brick wall and an adjacent patio roof. This affected the installation of the roof ridges as they had to be installed from the center of the roof instead of being slid into place from the outside. (Not difficult, just need to do it before the last roof panel goes into place).3. The concrete paver deck area for our gazebo has a 3 degree slope away from the house for drainage. When I erected the frame, I used flat 12” X 12” cinder blocks to shim the outer columns. After shimming, I re-measured the rectangle frame as well as the cross section measurements to ensure that all dimensions were in spec. With a 12 inch cement drill bit and hammer drill, I was then able to use concrete screw anchors to fasten the columns to the concrete below.4. The instructions for adding the weatherstripping are not correct (by Yardistry’s own admission). Make sure that before you assemble the flashing, that you set back the weather stripping about 1/4 inch from the edge that goes against the rafter. I did it this way and after the assembly, the underside of the roof has stayed dry, even through some torrential down pours.Hope these tips help.