How to build a gate

We did it. We built a gate today. And I had the best helper any gate builder ever had.....

....until he got the camera and started taking pictures of me!  He thought it was weird that I was taking pictures for "my blog", but then decided "my blog" needed pictures of me.  Yikes...I don't like pictures of me, to which he replied, "what, don't you feel pretty?"  Um....no.  Sawdust covered sweats never look pretty.  But anyway....

 We started with this:  I cut the lumber into lengths we had measured.  

The widest pieces are 1x4 inches, and the smaller are 1x2 inches.  Most are leftover pieces from the loft construction, and we just made do with what we had.   Here is the design as we played around with it.

He learned to set a hinge today.  Setting hinges is not that hard, but it's also not the easiest thing either.  I worked with the hinge for a long time making sure they opened the right way, had enough clearance to swing open, and were on the right side of the gate.

I decided that we would set it in place before we added all the pieces: it was getting a little heavy, and setting it into place and attaching the hinges would be a lot more difficult then!  But  boy, did we feel the power when it was attached!

That a nice looking, hinge, isn't it!??

We finished by attaching the rest of the vertical pieces to the top and bottom, a latch (hidden on the batch for security), and we had a gate.

Gate-less before.....

                      ....and all secure after!

















I have never built a gate before, but it turned out to be very simple.  I ended up using a much simpler design than I planned, and except for a slightly warped bottom board, it worked out fine.

 The words of my Pop-pop rang through my head today, although in a different situation.  He was a great cook and did all of the housekeeping for years of my memory; keep in mind that he was born in 1905, and this was not the norm for his generation!   His saying was "If you can read, you can cook".  Really, building is not that much different, just scarier if you aren't used to power tools.  But really, you can do it!  Read, research, ask questions and practice, and keep your fingers out of the way, and you're set!

There's just no telling what you can accomplish!