Arbor for a climbing flower.

Recently my mother asked me to build her some kind of arbor for a climbing flower.  The arbor would be placed against the chimney on one end of their house.

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This is a great little project.  After a visit to the local Home Depot where I found some surprisingly straight furring strips, 1 x 2 x 8 and 2 x 2 x 8.

I began by clearing off the driveway and trying a couple of different layouts.  Mom wants the arbor to be about 6 feet tall and 6 feet wide.


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I ended up using the edge of the drive as a guide.  With the 2x2x8 sticks on the outside I evenly spaced 5 of the 1×2 strips vertically.  This gave me the idea to add some height by moving the center strips higher.  It gave the arbor a sort of pyramid shape.  I then spaced the remaining strips horizontally, about every 12 inches.

I left the outside 2×2’s long on the bottom to give me something to anchor into the ground.  Once everything is positioned nicely, mark all of the strips that will need to be trimmed.  These can easily be cut with either hand or power tools.  Just remember to be safe however you do it.


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I tacked everything together with my brad nailer.  I used l-1/2″ brad nails, two at each crosspiece, then flipped the whole thing over and put in two more at every intersection.

After standing it up against the house to see it all together I realized that either my house is crooked or the bottom two boards moved on me a little.  Mom will never notice, once the flowers are growing up it.

This only took about an hour to put together.  Hope she likes it.


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got it installed.  Surprise, the measurements were all correct!
Now if only the plants would hurry up and grow to cover up the two crooked strips.