Antique Atherton Gazebo Going UP!

We are excited to have found what we think will be a very special and lovely solution to late afternoon sun during our ceremony.  Months ago, we learned about an antique Atherton gazebo, formerly gracing the estate of Don Lucas (Sr.), one of the earliest VCs, that was being offered on freecycle.  It had been cut up and stored for a long time and was in pretty bad condition.  The person who had had it no longer wanted it taking up space in her yard.  Here is how it looked when we moved the pieces into approximate places to get a sense of what it would look reconstructed, before we got it.

We were able to collect up all of the pieces, truck them down to San Jose them to be cleaned up, sand-blasted and powder coated.  Now they look like new.  We even found a great metal craftsman to reconstruct the pieces.  The only problem was that we did not know how the pieces fit together!  It seemed like it would be a fairly straight-forward thing to figure that out.  Eight angled pieces, each with two arms, 16 arms to the octagon, four large posts with caps distributed around the octagon, one center cap.  No problem, right?   

Turns out, we tried and tried and could not figure it out.  It was not making sense!  So, we tried a lot of different possibilities.  Playing around with viewing all of the newly painted pieces out on the lawn again, and moving them around into different locations.  We compared the cut edges. We measured lengths.  We analyzed the supporting structure.  None of that worked.  Finally, with the date for installation approaching, we had to turn to an expert to help us: a mathematical expert!  We turned, of course, to Jonathan, Sarah's Dad, to provide the geometric calculations that would allow us to figure out the real shape.  It wasn't easy even from a mathematical approach.  We kept getting weird solutions that, because the angles, combined with the support post locations did not add up.  None of the likely solutions seemed right.  But finally, math might conquered logic and we found the solution, which was this:

The post legs all went on one side!  Turns out that there are ten additional small post legs that we need to add—for which there are attachments that we did not focus on before (so that's what those little widgets are!)  Hooray!  A design that makes sense!

We are still waiting to erect this structure over the part of our lawn where the ceremony will be.  We still don't know exactly how it will look or how well it will serve to protect our guests from sun but we are looking forward to finding out and surprising you with the results.  We hope it will be worth all of the time and effort!