Curb Appeal : building new wooden gates part 3

The gates are up ! It's been a long busy week but I think I can claim that we are (nearly) there. We ran out of the stain, so have a few boards that still need painting, but the gates are up, functioning, and dog proof. I know I should wait until everything is completely done, but.......well, I just have to share because the whole lot is gorgeous!

The boys worked super hard on getting the front gates done over the last three days. The design was quite challenging as I wanted a rose arbour as well as a curved top to the gate, whilst still carrying through the design theme of diamonds.  We used a design pattern from Remodelaholic  for a garden arbor. They designed it for their vegetable garden to grow climbers like cucumbers, but I want it for roses and jasmine.We had to work the sizes a little to fit in the space - we have a canal bridge we have to fit next to.

The first job was to get the frame up. The ground was so soft that the hole drilling was a piece of cake - leaving a lovely layer of basal clay all over the walkway between the road and the house. Of course, when clay is wet, it sticks to your shoes like glue and the whole area turns into a muddy icerink - making life that much harder! It also made it quite hard to keep the fame completely straight and square which lead to some interesting challenges later with the trellis work.

From the frame, the boys turned their attention to the fencing : more poles to go in, and in this case at least one had to go into the canal. To do that, W had to get his neoprene waders on and 'get wet' in December. Luca was really not happy about this situation, so he kept watch from the bank and barked instructions and 'stay safe!' demands. Apparently a few quick lessons were learned : the left side is deeper than the right, but both are quite a drop, so 'jumping in' is not always the best way to get started! I can't say how glad I am that Luca doesn't like water - it makes life so much easier. I keep wondering about teaching him to swim, and then I think about the cost of fencing off the whole property and decide that he can wait a little while longer. He has already tried as a younger puppy, and has no problems getting across and out - he just hates the cold water with a passion.


From there, it was a case of hanging the gate, fitting the ironmongery and mounting the rose trellises. This is the point where they had another nasty shock - because of the soft ground the trellis was square - but the space wasn't! Some quick rework required to make it a better fit.  Once complete, we then rented a concrete cutter and sliced out the concrete posts of the old gate. It was so tired, it collapsed like butter - I'm so glad we got it replaced before Luca tried pushing through it.





Here we go : the final summary!

Inspiration for the front was :

The end result is this :

The main driveway gates inspiration was :

The end result (until we dog proof properly!) is : 

Not bad for first attempt if we say so ourselves! What do you guys think?

Some minor painting,, making a base for the new post box and working out how to dog proof the main gates left to do. I'm thinking of trying to 'float' smaller diamonds in the centre of each of the 4 main diamonds. That should hold back the hound. How would you dog proof the diamonds, and still keep the design  looking pretty?