The gate, or 'this week in unexpected projects'

After we built the wall, way back when, dad and Tomu made our gate from a raised panel door, which they cut in half and mounted sideways. Here it is in its early days. Look, we still have grass!

Here it is later, after we repainted the concrete walk. Holding up nicely.

 
Here it was this Memorial Day weekend. It had been sagging and we planned to take it down and square it, and add brackets to hold it...

...and here it is after trying to knock it square :(

So it turns out our solid wood door had MDF panels, which allowed water to penetrate and caused some rotting inside the frame. Time to build a new gate. But of course it's never that easy. First we had to replace the blade on the chop saw, a task I've been putting off for a year. Why? Who can say. We went to Home Depot for wood and a blade, and the girls did some home improvement yoga.

A few days later, the gate was up. One other new change we made was that we had some outdoor stain color matched to the original paint color. I think this will weather better than paint.

We put the whole thing together and then I jigged out the arches, using the original gate as a template.

The last step was to add some decorative boards over the screws! We may add a house number to the gate on that top board, but we're not sure yet.

Another "surprise" project was replacing the wood lining the walkway, which Tomu discovered was infested with subterranean termites. I mean obviously. So we replaced it with bamboo.

Looks like Mr. Gnome needs some paint. Add it to the list!