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This DIY Arbor Solved Our Curb Appeal Problem ~ Here’s How…

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Looking to add some curb appeal? We built this simple DIY Arbor in about a day! Here you can learn how to build an arbor over a window that’s affordable with pressure-treated lumber and simple DIY tools. Keep reading for our easy-to-build, DIY cheap arbor tutorial with all the tips, materials and step-by-step guide.

Intro by Robin & Steps by Ed

mobile home update curb appeal before

How do you improve the curb appeal of an almost 50 year old mobile home with a truly tragic front end? Quite frankly, I was stumped. And in the 8 years we owned the place I’ve been struggling to come up with anything at all that might help update it.

Ed would often find me in the driveway glaring at the thing – willing it to just speak up and tell me what would work! Well, folks, the day finally came. A DIY Arbor to the rescue!

wood Arbor over garage door
This inspiration photo sealed the deal for our DIY Arbor – though ours is over a window.
source

It worked out really well – and was a relatively simple and cheap DIY build.

It took us two afternoons – start to finish. (Including a mad dash to the only hardware store open on Sundays in the area – which robbed us of an hour and a half.)

We’ve been working on projects at our Mobile Home Makeover since the moment we bought it. (Maybe even before? We bought the new hickory laminate flooring before we even closed. You’re not supposed to do that, right? Well, it worked out in the end.)

If you’re new here, you may be wondering why in the world did we buy a decrepit mobile home? It doesn’t sound, you know, smart? (Here’s the backstory.)

Well, it’s on a two acre property with a lovely river running through it and a peaceful little forest – both of which our young kids would play in for hours (especially after we built a treehouse). It has an adorable log cabin bunkie, which we fixed up as a cute guest room. It has a romantic bridge over the river that is the perfect spot to gaze at the Milky Way, which we can’t see in the city.

The only wart on this beautiful place was this mobile home, as you can see here, and it got worse before it got better.

But Ed and I’s favourite thing to do together (ahem) is designing and executing DIY projects! And this one was both challenging and inspiring. Could we make this tragic mobile home something as beautiful as the property it’s on? We were up for the challenge!

So many upgrades! But the curb appeal had me at a loss.

And it’s important! It would be tough to look past the worn and peeling manufacturer sticker, the dated colour scheme, the decidedly unappealing trim and excessive bolts.

One day we hope to sell the place for a profit. The first thing you see matters! Enter today’s project: a DIY Arbor over the window! Here’s how we made it on a budget and in a few hours…

DIY Arbor FAQs…

What can I make an arbor out of?

Pressure-treated lumber or cedar are great choices, due to durability and affordability, but any lumber rated for outdoor exposure can work.

How do you make a freestanding arbor?

Smaller arbors can be built directly on the ground – we had a small, cedar arch that we kept in place with large pressure-treated stakes that we drove into the ground and then screwed the arbour to for stability.

Larger freestanding arbors should be treated like building a deck, in that you will probably want to either anchor the vertical posts underground in concrete or pour concrete piers and bolt the posts to them. While this is time-consuming and more costly, you will get an arbor that will last for years and be safe and secure for all who enjoy it. You will also get the added benefit of being able to use the piers to build a deck under your new arbour if you so choose.

How to build a custom arbor?

Typically start with pictures of arbors you admire and measure the space you want to build yours in. Scale is very important, so if you are building yours larger than the inspiration pictures you’ve collected, you will need to use larger dimensional lumber and keep in mind any curves, angles or other decorative flourishes will need to scale up too. See what we did here as an example.

What is the best lumber for an arbor?

Pressure-treated lumber or cedar both make great choices, due to their price and outdoor weather resistance.

Size/scale of your arbour is an important consideration too, so be sure to choose lumber that is both large enough to support all of your design and visually big enough to look ‘right’.

For this project we ended up using all pressure treated, and went with 2″x4″s as the top layer on our arbour, as the the other material we tried (2″x2″ and 2″x3″) looked too small.

DIY arbor over window

DIY Trellis Arbor

Materials

  • 2 – 2″ x 4″ x 8′ pressure-treated for the support corbels
  • 2 – 2″ x 12″ x 12′ pressure-treated for the long horizontal face lengths
  • 3 – 2″ x 4″ x 8′ pressure-treated boards for the short, top horizontal layer
  • Deck flashing tape
  • Special 6″ & 8″ construction (timber) screws
  • exterior silicone
  • assorted other smaller construction screws – be sure all hardware is rated for P-T contact.
  • Pressure Treated Wood End Sealer

Our Easy to Build DIY Arbor – How to…

1. Start by building the support structure corbels.

protect aluminum siding from pressure treated wood
These are not going to be just decorative, so be sure you are anchoring them into a solid part of your house(/mobile home).

Use a stud finder and locate places to secure both the vertical and horizontal parts of the corbel.

NOTE: You can also see that we used deck building flashing tape, as our siding is old, 1970’s aluminum and we didn’t want to take any chances with the metals in the aluminum having corrosive interaction with the pressure-treated lumber.

2. Cut and secure the horizontal member to your corbel.

DIY cheap arbor corbel step 1
We templated out all these parts with old lumber to get all the mobile-home-funky angles right.

If you are doing this on a home or garage, you will probably have right angles to work with. Still, if you are adding curves or angles to the ends of your structure, cut them now.

Anchor with at least two construction timber screwsm or bolts, long enough to go through the 4″ x 4″ and into your structure’s framing.

3. Add the vertical piece to the corbel

cheap DIY arbor corbel step 2
Add the vertical piece to the corbel, similar to above with all angles cut ahead of time and trial-fit in place to make sure it looks right.

*Note: Mobile home oldness – the bent section in the siding pictured above was there before we built this arbour and was not, in fact, caused by the arbour.

**Note 2: Mobile home oldness – the horizontal piece from step 2 above is actually attached flush to the roof overhang and is level, despite what this photo seems to show.

***Note 3: Sometimes you need to use a too-small ladder because a nest full of baby birds is built on your large one and you can’t bear to move them. 😂

4. Add the 45-degree angle support piece.

step 3 DIY arbor bracket
On a normal building with right-angled walls, this will be a simple 45-degree cut on your mitre saw.

On this mobile home, it was a manual “hold it up, adjust it a bit for appearance, draw a line, cut with a mitre saw at a bizarre, never used setting ” angle.

(Note: In this photo, we also have the 2″x12″s balanced on the top of the corbel just to get a sense of what looks visually correct for spacing. This is not the point to actually attach them.)

5. Secure in place.

securing DIY arbor bracket
The 45-degree support was just secured with 4″ deck screws – two in the bottom end…
attaching DIY arbor corbel
… and two in the top end. Later on, we will add a long, timber screw through both the angle support and horizontal support to anchor the 2″x12″ beams across the top too.

6. Repeat everything on the other side.

pressure treated DIY arbor corbels
It should get easier, as you will have all the angles from the previous side to copy!

7. Add the Horizontal Beams.

add horizontal beams to DIY arbor
Play around with the 2″ x 12″ beams and get really happy with their locations, make any end cuts you have in mind for decorative purposes etc.

Mark their locations on the top of the horizontal beams.

They are heavy so try and do this with the minimum number of lifting and lowering!
angle cut on horizontal DIY arbor beams
This is just a profile shot of the very tiny overhang we had on either side and the even tinier angle we were able to add to our beams.

The angle is just cosmetic to make it look less like stock materials. If we could have we would have done a more generous angle – but the budget would not allow us to custom order materials just for a bit “extra”.

8. If applicable, Protect your Aluminum Siding.

how to protect aluminum siding from PT boards
We deck flashing taped the back of the beam that was going to be closest to the trailer siding, for the same ‘PT can corrode aluminum’ reasons as before.

We gapped out this board away from actually touching the siding, but we wanted to be super-cautious will all of this stuff. It was a real belt and suspenders approach, we acknowledge and you could maybe skip this if you wanted.

9. Fill any Holes to Keep Water Out

mobile home front before
Before we covered the super-ugly face of the mobile home, we used exterior silicone to fill any holes in aluminum.

10. Predrill New Holes at Support Points.

how to attach DIY arbour to building
We then added new holes! Specifically, we predrilled for the screws that would anchor the long beam closest to the mobile home to the face of the roof.

11. Attach Back Horizontal Beam to Structure.

predrill timber screws to attach DIY arbour
I then started the long, timber screws while the board was on the ground and added 3 washers (not shown, but there, I promise) to the back of it to gap it out away from the roof for water drainage purposes.
hiding front of old mobile home with DIY arbor
We then anchored the large 2″ x 12″ x 12′ beam in the middle…
cheap diy arbor with pressure treated wood
…and on each end…
DIY cheap arbor with PT wood
… and yes, you likely noticed the top of the roofline still pokes up a bit above the arbour back in image 14a – after the top layer of horizontal boards are added and when viewed from the ground like a non-stepladder person, it is actually invisible.

12. Attach Top Trellis Pieces

attach top trellis pieces to DIY arbor
The 2″ x 12″ closest to the front of the arbour is actually just balanced in place now and you begin securing the top trellis boards.

We cut the first one short (because the roof sticks up in the centre) and secured it in the middle with simple deck screws angle-drilled on each 2″ x 12″.

We then cut full-length ones…
how to cut top trellis pieces
… and secured them in a few locations to keep the 2″ x 12″s locked in at a fixed distance from each other and upright.

Once the middle and end trellis boards were on, we measured the remaining gaps and cut and secured enough boards to space out at an equal distance (for us, about 14″) all the way across.

13. Secure Foremost Horizontal Beam from the Underside

secure front beam to DIY Trellis arbor corbels
Now, to secure the last 2″x12″ to the corbels.

This was easier to do after all the trellis boards were in place, as they held it vertically and at the correct distance. All we had to do was predrill…
timber screws for support of DIY arbour
… and then sink home the 8″ timber screws. Now this thing is really secure and is not going anywhere!
finished diy arbour over window
Done!

Well, almost. Any fresh cuts in the pressure-treated wood should get end sealer on them to protect them for the future.
DIY arbour how to
Pretty dramatic Before and After, no? We’re thrilled with the upgrade!

Get caught up with our Mobile Home Makeover series projects here

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Jan

Thursday 21st of September 2023

Thanks for the update. I hadn’t seen anything from you in a while and am glad to see you are back.

Robin & Ed Hicken

Friday 22nd of September 2023

Thanks, Jan! We're happy to be back! :)