Building the TojaGrid DIY Pergola

When we purchased this property, we were instantly in love with the outdoor space. It’s far from perfect, but it has lots of potential for different outdoor living scenarios.

One area in particular was this concrete slab near the rear of the property. I’m not sure what the previous owners used it for, but I thought it would be great for a small shed or seating area.

I recently came across the TojaGrid DIY Pergola kit and thought it was an ideal solution for how to use this space.

I am not a carpenter by any stretch of the imagination, so I needed something super simple and the TojaGrid looked like something that I could handle using some really basic tools.

The model that we picked was the 4x4 Kit with Shade cover and privacy slats on two sides. The area is on a bit of a slope so the walls will help with both privacy and safety.

After measuring out the slab, we decided that 8x8 feet would be a good size for the pergola. That would allow most of the base to be concrete with just a little overlap of the grassy area.

I ordered the pressure-treated lumber from Home Depot and had it delivered.

Once the lumber was delivered, the first thing that I checked was to see if the brackets fit. Unfortunately, they did not. The lumber was a bit swollen from the pressure-treating process.

But this wasn’t a huge issue. I purchased an electric planer and shaved the 4x4 post down to fit the brackets. After a few passes with the planer, the brackets slipped on the post with ease.

We quickly assembled the top frame and added the shade cover.

Then we moved on to adding the legs. I previously mentioned that this area was on a slope, and I didn’t realize just how severe the slope was up until this point. As we raised the top frame to sit onto the legs we noticed that none of the 4 corners were level.

We tweaked the depth of the ground using blocks as a short term solution, but we’re going to come back and build a more permanent solution.

We’re debating pouring a slightly bigger, and level, slab, or a floating deck.

Once that’s done, we’ll come back and add the rest of the privacy walls. We left those off for now just to make the pergola easy to move as we fix the base.

I’ll be sure to update this post once we finish part two.

Disclaimer: The Toja Grid Pergola kit was sent to me as a gift from Toja Grid. Links to their site are affiliate links and I will earn a small commission from any purchases made using the link.