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?

Luca's New Name

I've always been bemused by racehorse names, and pedigree animals are pretty much the same. Strange multilevel names that seem to have no connection to the animal.  After a couple of pedigree animals you'd think I'd be used to it but today I received Luca's papers. 

May I introduce Giant Angel Ultimate Edition!

I think it suits him!

Autumn's gold

Some of these posts may seem a little bit out of sequence because I am playing catch-up on a summer's worth of work in my blog. But the autumn weather has been beautiful - grey clouds shooting across the sky, winds whipping around corners, catching leaves and scattering them across the garden like stolen treasures. It's a constant battle to keep the concrete clear of leaves so that the cars have grip and grass disappears overnight in a golden blanket. 

I just had to share a few pictures of my 2 favourite men playing in the leaves. Luca's been having a complete blast and is burning up so much energy kicking up the leave piles, that he's curled up asleep from about 6 in the evening onwards. As you can see, it's not just Luca having fun!

Quick tool update - the  Stihl kombisystem has come into play again. We were super excited to find that it has a leaf blower attachment. It's cheaper than buying a standalone leaf blower - and because the base engine has to be capable of cutting brush, it's much more powerful than most blowers on the market. I'm also grateful for the ear defenders - it doesn't get any quieter!

We've been using an old silo bin as storage for our compost and garden waste - it drops about 2 feet down below ground level and is well contained to stop leaves from blowing out. With every run to the silo, I feel more and more like Smaug the dragon building my own personal gold mountain.

Home is where the Woofer is

Its been quite a few years since my Shadow crossed the rainbow bridge and for a long time, I didn't really want another dog. There are some dogs that are just that special that you are not likely to meet another one quite like it - and Shadow hit that perfect spot.

It's also hard to travel when you own animals, unless you take them with you or have a great relationship with a local kennel. As Shadow had a lot of health issues, kenneling generally wasn't an option, so it was travel with dog or find a friend! I also feel that its unfair on a dog to be alone during the day, and with the move to a new country that was pretty much on the cards all the time  - so another woofer just wasn't an option. 

Life changes though & with W's new job, the 'alone time' dropped dramatically and it became possible to think about having a dog in our lives. I made the mistake of looking around to see what woofers I could find and met this adorable chap. He really looked more like a guinea pig, than a puppy - and sounded remarkably like one too. 

As the largest puppy in the litter, he clearly shared some dietary traits of a porcine nature. Here he is with his sister, the day before he left for his new home. 


The first few days of settling in were quite challenging as the renovations were still in full flow, so the house was full of people wielding sharp implements and pots of paints. Luca quickly demonstrated his ability to get underfoot, find and remove the tool you have just put down, or simply cause chaos.  We have started puppy training, which is all done in Dutch and is a huge encouragement to accelerate my language skills. Thankfully, some of the basic commands sound almost the same in English and Dutch so I can claim to have a bi-lingual puppy. Or as close as you can come, when he wilfully and cheerfully ignores you because he's found something far more interesting than listening to his master's voice!

Despite the puppy training being second time around, I am struggling to find some comparative  commands to those we are learning here : 'high' and 'low' for 'stand on box' 'get off box to the ground' just don't quite sound right and Luca can definitely  hear the lack of confidence in my voice. If anyone knows what the commands should be, please let me know!

It's quite an exhausting experience for a young puppy to spend an hour concentrating hard, in a group of distracting and interesting other pups. So Friday nights usual end up rather like this - with Luca inelegantly sprawled on his own personal sofa .