Joseph Ferguson looked to the past to find a home for something relatively new. “We were definitely looking for a place for our hot tub,” says the owner of Ferguson Heating and Air Conditioning in Leechburg. “We thought a gazebo would work for that and as a place for our grill.” Gazebos, once the home of Sunday evening concerts illuminated by the fireflies of August, are becoming the showplace of backyards. “We take them out of their traditional settings and put them in backyards,” says Ray Halackna, owner of the Archadeck outlet in Upper St. Clair. “But you also see them more and more in apartment complexes and senior citizens homes.” They can be smallish structures or as impressive as Ferguson’s in Allegheny Township, Westmoreland County. It is two-tiered, topped by a slate-looking roof, and has decorative trim. Some basic models can start at $500, but they can cost as much as $20,000, retailers say. They can be the efforts of “weeks” of work, as Ferguson attests, or be delivered pre-built and dropped in place. Janet Moyher, of Amish Crafts & Gift Shop in Unity, Westmoreland County, says the gazebos she sells can range from fairly simple units of Amish design to those decorated with trim and cupolas. “We just try to keep everyone covered,” she says. Atlee Raber, owner of a gazebo construction firm near Canton, Ohio, says the gazebo market is maintaining strength because of varieties in construction and a greater interest in the backyard. “A lot of backyards are not developed,” says the head of Berlin Gardens Gazebos. “People were taking care of their front yards, because that’s what would be seen, but now they are turning to the back as a place to entertain.” But there are quieter uses, too. Beth Ettinger, 84, says one of the gazebos at the Village at St. Barnabas in Richland often beckons as a resting spot on warm days. She sometimes lunches there and uses it as a place to put up her feet and feed the fish in the adjacent lake. “I just don’t understand why people stay inside when they can come out,” she says. “I see some regulars here, but I don’t understand why more people don’t use it.” A new look for an old favorite Brian Brinza sees the useful side of gazebos, but also knows they often become simply a great decoration. “The closer a gazebo is to a home, the more it’s used,” says the owner of Brinza’s Barewood Essentials in Moon. “You can picnic in it, use it as a shelter from the rain. But not if it’s farther away.” The buildings are made with a variety of materials, such as wood, vinyl or composite materials — wood chips and plastics blended to look like wood, right down to the grain. The cost can vary depending on the materials. While the use of pressure-treated wood or cedar is at the heart of gazebo construction, composite materials and vinyl are 30 percent more costly but gaining in popularity because they require less maintenance. Manufacturers range from large distributing companies to smaller, “mom-and-pop” operations. Manufacturer Raber says his wood gazebos run from $2,000-$6,000, a cost that easily rises to $3,000-$9,000 for synthetic structures. Brinza and Halackna agree on the price estimates, but Halackna points out some homeowners can get caught up in projects, making costs climb to more than $15,000. Composite materials are not good as support beams. So when a low-maintenance structure is desired, posts and beams generally are wood or metal surrounded by a vinyl facing, dealers say. But the composites have other benefits. “That’s what we used on ours,” Ferguson says. “I didn’t want to get splinters in my feet.” Price goes up with complexity Ferguson says he spent between $6,000 and $8,000 for his gazebo, but that was for parts only. A friend, Carl Piekierski, the owner of the Stanford Home Centers in Plum and Leechburg, designed the gazebo, and Ferguson put it up himself. “We got a lot of pictures, and he designed it the way I wanted it to be,” he says of the 16- by 12-foot structure. He says saving money doing the work himself allowed him to use cedar rather than less-expensive, pressure-treated wood for the construction. He also used composite material for trim, the floor and the roof, which has a slate look. Gazebo work generally isn’t a job for do-it-yourselfers. Brinza says his company has kits available, but “we sell very few of them. Most times, we do the work ourselves. We can put up a 10-foot gazebo in two hours.” Gazebos often can be prebuilt and delivered to a home site where a base has been prepared. Often, that can be simply a flat spot on which gravel has been spread, Moyher says. Brian Lucas, of the Home Depot outlet in Ross, says his store does a fair amount of kit business, and even takes the do-it-yourself task a step further. The stores have books that guide workers step-by-step through construction from scratch. No pre-cut pieces. No pre-drilled holes. From scratch. “That isn’t a job for everyone,” he says, “but when someone does it, we find they are very proud if it.”
Other options A variety of outdoor structures is challenging the realm of the gazebo.
Pergolas — a larger cousin to the arbor, with a trellis-like side and roof — are emerging atop decks, says Ray Halackna, owner of an Upper St. Clair Archadeck outlet.
Brian Lucas, of the Home Depot in Ross, says a broad range of easy-to-assemble outdoor buildings are being used in the same way as gazebos, even though they bear no resemblance.
Backyard gliders, on which tables and benches often are mounted under a roof, can be the same size as gazebos and serve some of the same purposes, says Janet Moyher, of the Amish Craft & Gift Shop in Unity.
Pergolas can take on some of the same elegance of design as gazebos, say Halackna and Brian Brinza, of Brinza’s Barewood Essentials in Moon. Just like gazebos, they can be made of wood or synthetic materials and use a wide range of trim. Often, they are being added to decks as a stylish porchlike roof. In the same way, they can be used as an area to relax in the backyard, Halackna says, adding it is possible to top $10,000 for a top-of-the-heap pergola. Brinza says it isn’t uncommon to spend about $3,000 on a 10- by 10-foot pergola. But Lucas says there are plenty of options. Home Depot’s catalog lists seven traditional gazebos, three pergolas, two arbors, four metal-frame “column gazebos” and even one “barzebo,” supplying a home with a sip or two. Some pergolas at Home Depot are listed around $750, but Lucas says the screened-in or canvas-top frame buildings sell for as little as $200. “They look sort of like a tent, but they get the job done,” he says. Brinza also talks about a rectangular unit called a pavilion. It is a generally floorless, rectangular structure with a solid roof like a gazebo. He finds them popular for housing hot tubs. Backyard glides look far different from the buildings, but also offer a place for outdoor relaxation, Moyher says. They can have a table mounted on them or bench seating facing each other, and sell for $1,500 or more.
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