Basking In The Shade

I have had this Shade project lingering over my head for sometime now and even though summer is almost over and we are tightening the belt to afford to replace the A/C-Heater unit in the house, this one little thing had to get finished.

Over the past few months I have been collecting materials for the patio shade.
At first I wanted to build a nice wooden structure that looked all fancy, but after pricing everything out I quickly realized that was not going to work. A $3200 patio cover was not in the budget.
So I started to think cheap and designed it, but even then with cattle panels and lattice work it was going to cost $400. Yes, it is a far cry from the first design but it was going to look like crap and I was not going to be happy with it.

My cousin called a month ago and asked if I could use a automatic sun shade. Well sure I could!
I had some heavy wall pipe already on my trailer and down in the barn I had some lumber, lattice work and broken bags of concrete I have been collecting from the cull piles at the lumber stores. I make it a habit to go by and look through the cull piles at least once a week. You can save a butt load of money that way.

I set the posts last Thursday and somehow during all the other things that was going on Sunday, I managed to finish the project. It just so happens I had my labor force (the girls) there at one time and I took advantage of it.

  This shade even has a remote control. All I have to do it hit the button and it automatically unrolls itself. Now that's high cotton right there!
Not a bad little project that will come in really handy and all for $18.00. That was the price of the u-bolts to hold the boards on the metal pipe.

See ya,
MDR