Since we moved into the house, the back gate has creaked loudly and it hangs so low that it scrapes along the sidewalk. It never provided, except for it's sound, a very dramatic entry to the back yard.
Saturday, I tried to remedy some of these things with a back gate renovation. I removed the gate from the hinges, re-oiled the hinges and cut about 2 inches off the bottom. I added a diagonal reinforcement to the gate and also cut a parabolic shape in the top.
It works very well now and no longer does the entire neighborhood know when I am going from the front to the back yard or vice versa. I did have one problem. I did not plan that the gate overlaps the corner post so my parabola looks off-center. In the future, I need to plan these things more carefully. In the coming months I will be adding a pergola/gateway feature above the gate.
While shopping for gate supplies at Lowe's, I noticed that the yard stuff is on sale. I decided to pick up three tiki
torches to add to the "white trash ambiance" of the yard. I think the ones I got are a little too nice so they don't really compliment the plastic crap or the see-saw gnome and frog sculpture. At night, the yard does look like an episode of
Survivor though and that's pretty cool. The final two pics are just for fun: me playing Martha Stewart (a secret fetish of mine) after cutting back the zinnias. The other is a huge dragonfly that was perched on the leaf of one of our sunflowers.
Saturday, I tried to remedy some of these things with a back gate renovation. I removed the gate from the hinges, re-oiled the hinges and cut about 2 inches off the bottom. I added a diagonal reinforcement to the gate and also cut a parabolic shape in the top. 
It works very well now and no longer does the entire neighborhood know when I am going from the front to the back yard or vice versa. I did have one problem. I did not plan that the gate overlaps the corner post so my parabola looks off-center. In the future, I need to plan these things more carefully. In the coming months I will be adding a pergola/gateway feature above the gate. 
While shopping for gate supplies at Lowe's, I noticed that the yard stuff is on sale. I decided to pick up three tiki torches to add to the "white trash ambiance" of the yard. I think the ones I got are a little too nice so they don't really compliment the plastic crap or the see-saw gnome and frog sculpture. At night, the yard does look like an episode of Survivor though and that's pretty cool. The final two pics are just for fun: me playing Martha Stewart (a secret fetish of mine) after cutting back the zinnias. The other is a huge dragonfly that was perched on the leaf of one of our sunflowers. 
