We have been working on our chicken coop and our vegetable garden pretty much non-stop for the last month.  We really got a lot done over the 4th of July weekend.  It’s when we usually do a huge project since we normally have that time off from any work.  We thought we had the rest of this area planned out until this Facebook Marketplace find for the garden popped up.  We couldn’t resist and couldn’t pass on it due to the price.

Facebook Marketplace Find for the Garden

Do you remember when we had this idea to make a grand entrance to the front of the garden.  I shared a glimpse of it when I shared the picket fence we installed.  And, also again when we added the steps to the front of the garden.  

Our son-in-law dropped off these columns last fall because he found them in a dumpster.  Ha!  Our family knows us well.  So they have been setting outside waiting for the perfect project. We had this idea to add them to the front of the garden and make a pergola structure on top.  We set some 4 x 4 posts with concrete and then added the hollow columns over the top of them.  And that is as far as we got because we were getting our plants in the ground amongst other things.  

That pergola structure was going to be the project of the week last week.  As you can see by the photo above, one of the caps were missing on the top and the other ones were in rough shape. Deb decided she wanted to use the bases that came with them (not shown) but we were missing two of them as well.  So we figured since the ones we had were damaged, we would order 4 new tops and 4 new bottoms for this project.  Sound easy enough.  Little did we know that each top and each bottom were priced separately at $100-$150 EACH.  That would be $800-$1,000.  We weren’t sure what we were going to do.  Deb thought about making them, but decided it would take her FOREVER to make 8 of them.

Take note of a quick project Deb did to make our propane tank look better.  She added a bunch of stones under it to clean it up.  It’s the little things that make us happy.

Good old Facebook Marketplace came through again.

On Deb’s daily scroll, 4 huge white columns popped up 15 mins away from us.  They were a lot taller and in excellent shape.  And, they had all of the top caps and bottom bases that were also in great condition.  We decided this would be a much less expensive option for this garden pergola and got all four of these columns for $200.

Deb’s brother was here visiting when we brought them home.  He ended up exchanging out three of the four columns for us to see what they are going to look like. The fourth one was attached and we didn’t have time to go get the drill to take if off. They are A LOT taller.  At first, I was worried they were too tall and looked too massive.  But, they grew on me.  It will actually make this entrance a little grander, which is what we wanted in the first place.  They are a lot bigger than the first ones as you can see by the photo above.

We had all of the plans to get this project going this past weekend.  It rained half of the day on Saturday and then we had other commitments the rest of the weekend… Gahhhhhh!  Are you as excited to see this project complete as I am?  Ha!