When ya buy the corner store, ya get two street frontages. It is on a corner, geddit?
So by Friday lunchtime, I had the slats screwed in, the backing braces mounted, and the massive monster side gate was ready to go.
It was sitting on a couple of long sticks of pine laid over 4 x 44 gallon drums. All six of the saw horses we own between us are being used to hold up the front gate and mount the compound mitre saw I was doing all the cutting with.
I legged it for lunch. Mates weren't at our usual Friday lunch spot, so I grabbed some lunch to go (homemade biltong) and went back to the job.
Where I found my son and one of his employees enthusing over the rear gate.
"Dad, I reckon you, me and Brodie can get this gate off these drums and muscle it over to the fence and put it in", said #2 son.
It took 4 of us to move the front gate which is a bit smaller, but whatever.
So we looked at it for a while and decided we could do it.
Took the gate off the drums and walked her over to the fence.
During this exercise I discovered I no longer have the strength in my hands to lift something that heavy. I am definitely the weakest link - Brodie, who wouldn't weigh 60kg wringing wet, barely worked up an accelerated breathing rate.
Fortunately, our family has never been short of Taekwondo belts. When you move up to the next grade your old belt becomes kinda redundant, but the old belts are perfect straps for lifting heavy stuff.
Took a couple of turns around each hand and I was no longer relying on arthritic fingers to hold the weight.
We got her over to the fence, and threaded her through the guide posts. We made a bracket for the guide rollers, as nothing our missing builder did suited the gate or fence to the commercially available stuff, set her all on the unsecured rail, messed around getting everything straight and vertical, screwed the rail down to the concrete, and got her all sliding sweet.
Now Brodie has completed
triple apprenticeships in metal fabrication, carpentry and electrical. Quite an achievement for a young fella still in his 20's.
I've seen him in action on the metal fab and the electrical. The lad's seriously skilled.
So it was kinda heartwarming when I said, "Do ya reckon it looks alright, boys?", and he replied, "Alright? It's bloody sensational!"
- Side gate mounted.JPG (54.2 KiB) Viewed 728 times
We are now waiting on replacements for some mysteriously absent hardware so we can mount the front gate.
In the meantime, today I finished skinning the hatch and sanding it ready to seal tomorrow. This involved a conversation with the missus. I'd asked her how late she thought I'd get away with running the sander, which is pretty noisy. Two of our neighbours have kids who have just started going to school and she reckoned bedtime would be 7:30 on a school night. So I watched the clock and turned off the sander and the compressor at 7:25.
Hatch is OK, I guess.
- Hatch ready to seal.JPG (85.72 KiB) Viewed 728 times
