Front gate: Done!

Finally!!! It feels as if we have been without a functioning gate for a month rather than a week at most.

Saturday

After wrestling with a rusty, dull handsaw to cut the angles for the crossbearer, giving up, finding a hacksaw, putting in a new blade, starting it with the hacksaw and struggling with the rusty, dull saw for the rest of the two cuts, I put the crossbearer in screwed it on.

'WOOHOO!' I thought 'I can hang it now!' But my moment was short-lived when I discovered that the DIY-impaired husband had re-measured the gap for me, while I was at Mitre 10 Mega on Friday, and it turned out that MY measurement I had written down was correct, his measurement was 5cm too short. I was rather cross (understatement!!). I could carry the gate through the gap without hitting it on either fence post. I could have cried... but instead I yelled, and he left an hour early for work. Oops. Sorry Mr DIY-impaired.

After I had cooled down a bit, I decided I needed to just cut down a couple of the offcuts and attach them to the fence post then attach the gate to those. However, I was not really keen on attempting that with my saw (incidentally, it was found on the ground in the shed under the lawnmower) so when my Mum came to visit, she came with me to wrangle children and we made another trip to Mitre 10 and came home with some 75mm screws, a pair of whacking great hinges (that came complete with pathetic 'why even bother' screws) aaaand...... a shiny new Mactec (the Makita 'home brand' said the man in the shop) circular saw!

That night, Mum took the big kids to her place for a sleepover, so it was just Red and I, which was just lovely! The next day it poured with rain.

Monday morning

I had to wait to play with it until this morning. I didn't even get it out of the box - very restrained!

Off-cuts, ready to be cut down further to become packers

So this morning, when DIY-impaired husband took Red to her swimming lesson, I got on with it and cut down the bits of wood, attached them to the gate post, then attached the gate to the packers!

Hinges placed, ready to be attached to the gate.

I loved using the circular saw - and upon skim-reading the instruction manual, I see that I can but beveled edges up to 45 degrees too, so that it good to know!

I had to move the magnetic gate latch and re-site it on the fence post and the gate, and now it's all good to go!

All hung and useable! 

Sadly the picket profile isn't exactly the same, but I'm pretty sure our old pickets are pretty original!

The only thing I needed to sweat about, was that when I screwed on the bottom packer, it split! So I may need to do something about that another time, but hopefully it will just stay put for a good long time *cross fingers and eyes*

Now Red can go outside with the big kids and play safely while I cook tea each night! Woohoo!

Manky old gate. I'm going to hang on to it and hopefully recycle the pickets when I get around to making the playhouse that is in the pipeline.