Our new front gate

For years we have been wanting a new front gate to add a bit of street appeal as we have a high fence, boring paling gate that looked like the fence and trees , there are only glimpses of the house. We needed the gate to be a bit more special. We dreamed of a wrought iron swirly type of gate and had been unsuccessfully looking for a free or cheap one for a long time. Needless to say, no luck there but then one day we saw this....

See Evie poking her hand through, pretending she was jail.

It was on a local footpath awaiting council collection, so we snapped it up, hoping it would fit perfectly into the old gates spot (and also into our car). After getting it home, we sized it up and figured out a way to make it work, borrowed some power tools from my Dad, shaved of the sides and base a little, sanded it all back, gave it a massive clean, puttied all the nail holes and finally painted it the same grey as our fence. This took about 2 months of a little bit of work here and there as we have 2 kids our weekends are filled with many other things to do. We reused the same handle and hinges so the total cost was $0, except for the paint and putty we already had and a large amount of time, blood, sweat and tears*.

(*actual tears where from our little squirrels as they kept wanting to "help" us paint with the spray gun and lets just say my legs and shoes are now grey)

Sizing up the gate into it's final home.

 

Work in progress, the varnish was very flaky. Maybe why the previous owners got rid of the gate?

There was a lot of discussion and consultation with family, friends and neighbours about if the gate should be grey or white. My usual self would have advised WHITE, FOR SURE but practicality won out as even the grey fence gets a visible coating of dirty/mud/dust and I would not be able to stand looking at a white gate that has a brown stripe of dirt at the bottom. Also we decided that the grey would give a more subtle soft look to the entrance. We are very happy with the finished product, it works far better then our old gate and seems to improve the street view of the house and is obvious where the entrance is. 

The finished product!

Things still to do: Paint the bricks under the letter box, remove bricks under the gate and replace with some nice grey  large rectangular pavers that will create a path  out to the road to further define the entrance. ( when I cant find these mystery pavers for free or cheap).

Bye for now, Lou x