Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Fence - Nearly Complete?

A few weeks back I finally got around to installing the gate. It took me a while to get around to it after putting in the rest of the fence. In the meantime it had just been gently leaned between the fence posts. This was sufficient to keep Jasper from escaping, but also greatly reduced the urgency to get the project finished. There were two other hiccups in the way: 1) the fencing distributor had given me a crap set of hinges not suited to this application, and 2) neither had they provided me with the proper cladding/trim pieces that need to be installed before the gate hardware.
 
I got around to it eventually, though, and am rather pleased with the results.


 
Plumb and level, with a nice uniform gap
 
The bottom corner of the open edge bulges out about an inch. This is not my fault. The posts on either side are plumb and parallel; it is the gate panel itself that is not flat.
 

 
It may not be obvious without close examination, but I needed to take a hand saw to the gate when I installed it. The fence rails are 2x3s, but the gate panel was assembled using 3x3s. This means that, when I installed the hinge and got the pickets all in the same plane, the rails of the gate panel were an inch (well, 3/4") too thick. So here, where the gate mates to the open side post, I notched the gate panel rails. This has the handy side benefit of keeping the gate from swinging too far closed.
 
As I said, the fencing distributor didn't really give me the right trim pieces for covering up the metal fence posts. While the flange of the metal post can be covered with a 1x4, it really ought to be done with a 1x6. I haven't gotten around to picking those materials up yet. Better hurry I suppose, or it'll be winter before I get around to it.

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