Monday, September 17, 2007

Gates and More Gates

We've had a number of gate projects that we've been working on along with a variety of other activities. On a positive note, we have located and hired a gate contractor for the front gates! :D. Last I wrote, we had estimates brewing. One guy we just eliminated because he kept on telling us things than not following through. (ie. estimate tomorrow, then calling at 8 p.m. 5 days later on a Saturday night). Today, the gates should be installed! We are really excited. It took 3 separate visits to come up with the design and finalize the installation. I'm crossing my fingers that it comes off without a hitch.

Now, of more house-blog related interest, we spent labor day weekend and the following weekendthe building and installing a new back gate. We sort of had one-but it was extremely hard to open, and clearly in a whole bunch of disrepair.

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For the project, I was the painting queen. (I also happened to sell an old TV while I was in the back yard painting all the slabs-talk about efficient!) Glenn, on the other hand, handled the construction.

The play by play (sort of):
1. Glenn affixed a post support into the concrete. In the bottom right of the photo of the dilapidated gate, you can see the black post support. It is set back from the other gate because he needed the gate support next to the garage to be attached to a garage joist. If he tore down the gate, then put in the gate, we would have been without a gate for a period of time, which we didn't want.
2. Paint like a fiend. We used pressure treated lumber, and I furiously primed and painted everything. (I handled the painting, while Glen did the rest)
3. Build the gate "surround" Ie. A 2x4 along the garage (where the lock will go), the post in the post support on the other side, and a bar going across the top for added support.
4. Add in post support. (the angled 2X6 in the photo)
5. Construct the door with a gate making kit. We found ours at Menards I believe finally after looking for months, so it seemed. It came in a big yellow square box and had the hardward that would allow the user to construct the rectangular structure for the door.
6. Add the slats to the door. These were affixed to the gate structure from 5.
7. Hang the door. With this, there's a lot of finangling with a level. if the door is not hung right, with everything level, this will cause neverending issues with the door not closing properly.

We completed these first 7 tasks all in one long, drawn out exhausting day.

The next day, we worked on installing the locks and fine tuning the work from the day before.

I'll have to come back to add photos, as apparently, my memory card wasn't as complete as I thought. I'll try to get Glenn to revise this as well to be more accurate with the how tos.

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