Scavenger Chic

Wedding, Rustic Stick Arbor DIY

• By Joan
• June 20, 2017
• 4 Comments

I mentioned last week that this past weekend was going to be spent at my son’s wedding. And with the wedding comes projects…lots of projects.

My first assignment was an arbor.  An arbor?  Do I get pictures for inspiration, materials you want me to use?

No, they trusted me.  Now why would they do that?

Apparently their venue did not have an arbor and an arbor is what they envisioned.

After my own Google searches for inspiration I eventually settled on a stick arbor.  This was my supplier for the project…a beautiful woods next to a river.  The hunt was on for straight branches.

I originally cut 6 of my straightest sticks about 8 feet in length.  You’ll see in a moment why I ended up only using 2 of those lengths.

The remainder of the branches were used for rungs on my ladders.

Cut 12 pieces of the thicker branches to 3 foot lengths, 6 per side.

Cut another 10 pieces ( more or less) for the top.  These can vary 3- 3 1/2 feet

Each of the 12 pieces for the horizontal rungs of the side ladders were notched to sit flat on the vertical sides.

With 3 inch wood screws, I screwed the notched rungs to the side pieces of the ladder.

Originally I was going to have the sides made totally of sticks.  I screwed the stick ladder rungs to the sides, stood the whole thing up and absolutely hated it.

The side sticks were the straightest ones I could find (don’t they look straight?), but the slight bend in each of the sticks made the whole thing look deformed and wonky.

Those side sticks are now firewood.

For the top, I did end up using sticks for both the side pieces and rungs. It wasn’t as important for these pieces to be super straight.

These stick rungs were not notched but they did screw into the sides of the top ladder.

Originally, I also had stick corner braces but as it got closer to the wedding I started to get a little worried about the sturdiness of the structure and I replaced those with 2×3’s.

Since I trashed the four legs made of sticks I ended up replacing them with four, 8 foot, 2×3’s.  They weren’t quite as rustic but they were straight.

To get the 2×3’s to blend in with the sticks, I first gave them a coat of light walnut varathane.

The light walnut was followed by flat black just lightly dry brushed on.

This was the dry run.  Just making sure it stands in my own backyard.

If you want to keep out more sun, add more sticks.

In order for the arbor to fit in our car, it had to be dismantled and reassembled at the venue.

How many guys does it take to put together an arbor? Six.

One to hold the branches, one to screw, one to hand out screws and three  to supervise.  🙂

I was beyond excited to see it finally up and fairly sturdy.

The dogs were doing a dry run just to make sure it worked.

With a chance of afternoon showers and 90 degree heat, we postponed adding the flower decorations until right before the wedding.

After the passing thunderstorm it was a mad scramble to wire up the flowers before the guests began to arrive.

The flowers the couple chose were gorgeous.  They made my arbor look good!

The final touch was to wrap the sides and top with eucalyptus leaf garland.

Isn’t this a beautiful setting.  If you are in southern Maryland and planning a wedding you might just want to take a look at Jubilee Farms.

This photo was from The Tuckers Photography.

This photo was also from their official photographer, The Tuckers Photography and really captured the joy of the day.

Make sure you come back later in the week,  I have more wedding projects.

Have a wonderful week, stay inspired.

Shared at Talk of the Town,

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