In which we attach 6 boards

We're still working on the arch and today we started adding the slats for the lattice to one of the sides. Now, we want the sides to be level and square and all that good stuff when we are done and what we found after just making the frame was that we weren't quite true. So, we decided to use the lattice to shore things up. We left a little wiggle room in the 2x4 / 4x4 frame and laid it one side down on the ground

Then we used shingles to prop it until it was perfectly level. Next came a big choice, how to form the lattice? We tested out a lot of different shapes and finally decided that the traditional even squares was, well, a little too square for us. So we decided to go with a more modern offset pattern

The angle of the photo makes it a little hard to tell, but the slats are in fact farther apart as they get closer to the bottom. Matt and I had to break out our algebra skills to get it done (holy 7th grade flashback, batman!)

You can see here where we did our calculations:

in case that is hard to see, here's what we have:

1x+2x+3x+4x+5x+6x=69

solve for x and you get 3.28 inches. multiply by two and add, you get 9.84, by 3 and add and you get 19.68, etcs and you have the distances for all the boards. It took a while, but I think it looks pretty cool. Tomorrow, we'll add the vertical pieces, making it look something like this: