Building this Gazebo has been a total labour of love involving lots of fantastic people all working hard together and willing the final product to be as beautiful as it has turned out.
The project started with Roger coming up with the idea and the design, Bryn (of Brynmorin Horse logging woodland management) collecting the Oak from his forest in Rydlewis less than 5 miles from us.
Bryn then worked with Roger in the big barn at Ceridwen shaping the green oak, however Bryn soon took over completely and built the frame pretty much by himself and we had various dry runs to construct the roof structure and then the columns and their bracing.
Meanwhile Rob, Ben and Roger dug the foundations in the walled garden. The kingpost was shipped off to Mark Folds a local sculptor who came up with a lovely interpretation of the Ceridwen logo of the tree of life in a 3D format.
The erection of the frame was a truly community affair – like the old barn-raising. Nyle, Ben, Roger, Rob, Dav, and of course Bryn all got involved and the frame miraculously appeared and everything worked perfectly.
Then the issue of roofing began. Roger was going to do this but the wedding season was upon us and Jamie stepped in. Initially it took a couple of days to set out the levels as we wanted the bottom edge of the slates to look exactly right. All the slates were second hand mostly rescued from buildings that had been on the site at one time or another. The hip joints were carefully cut so that no unsightly flashings were required. Finally Mark was called in again for the finial – again the tree of life this time from some eucalyptus that he had laying around.
The Simon turned up two days before the gazebo was due to be used (because Roger was again too busy) and tiled the upper half of the hexagon with reclaimed welsh slate pavings for the flooring and Bryn finished the other half of the decking using beech that was planked from 2 large beech trees that came down in the winter and actually caused the power cut in Dre-fach felindre 2 miles away. The balustrating and the benches were again finished by Bryn and we were done..
All of us had fun, enjoyed working with each other and have made a lasting thing of beauty that we are all proud to have been involved with and all from local materials.. well done all.
