Arches and Gates

Here's one of my favorite projects from last year. Our back yard had two exits. One was a barely-functional double gate the previous owners used to get their boat out from behind the fence. It was essentially two sections of the fence put on sagging hinges. You could get it open, but only with much grunting. The other was next to the garage on the other side of the house, and about as far away from any place you'd want to be in the front yard as it gets.

I could tell from examining the fence that there used to be a gate right next to the house. They had boarded it up when they'd put in some raised garden beds along that section. But I came along and removed the garden beds, which opened up that spot to become a gate again.

Of course we didn't just want a clunky old section-of-the-fence type gate. We wanted an archway. And so one day last fall we bought an arch kit from Home Depot and I got to work.

I removed the section of fence (former gate), which was wider than the arch by a couple feet. That meant I needed to put in a new post and restore a small section of fence. I decided to put in the two feet extending from the post right next to the house. Once that was done it was a simple matter to "plant" the arch in the gap. But next I needed a gate. No problem. I picked up some 1"x3" stakes, hinges, and latch, and pulled out some left-over 2"x3" from a shelving project.

A short time later I had a gate, and we now have an attractive and convenient passage between the front and back yards.

Of course that creates the necessity to put in a nice pathway from the arch to the front door--or at least do something with that former flower-bed you can see right in front of the arch.

But as any good do-it-yourselfer knows, you never complete your list of projects. You just uncover new ones with every project you do. We lived in our previous house for five years and spent much of that time taming the large back yard, tweaking the landscaping, and convincing the fruit trees to grow. We still weren't really finished when we moved.

Landscaping is never really complete. It is merely abandoned.