The Garden Fence – Part 2

Hope everyone had a happy Easter! Here’s the crew from work enjoying some BBQ for lunch on good Friday before we went home early.

Last post we started building a fence around Oceana’s garden.

This week we picked up right where we left off. We got set up and started cutting more of the pickets to size and then ripping some of the pickets in half for the narrower width. Once we had a pile of pickets together, we got them installed across the front. With the front complete, we moved to the back. Other than the gates, there was only one fence section remaining.

A story to tell the story

We’re still working on the interior of this side of the house – the kitchen and the master suite. When we do the master, we’ll be reframing the outside wall and changing the window openings. Once all of this happens, then we’ll install new siding on this side of the house. It sure needs it – take a look at that picture above! I say all that to explain about this last fence section – I wasn’t sure where to locate the fence post near the house as I didn’t want to block access from installing the new siding. What I ended up doing was keeping the post about six inches away from the house and then putting up two short rails and one picket between the post and the house. That way, I can pull four screws and have access to fit a nail gun and a paint brush between the post and the house.

The final fence panel

With the post location figured out, I got the last post set in place and quickly finished up the last fence section. Now the only thing left is the gates. I wanted the gates to be dual swing – mean they can open either in or out. To do this requires a specific type of hinge. A specific type of hinge that I couldn’t find anywhere. So do I just abandon the idea? Nope……I make my own hinges.

Keeping it simple

The design is very, very basic. I need a couple heavy duty “L” bolts and then a bracket to mount the gate onto the L bolts. To make the L bolts, I bought some long lag screws.

I cut the hex head off of the lags and then chucked them up in a vise. While in the vise, I used a cutting torch to heat them up and then bent them into the “L” shape.

Rinse and repeat.

The last step was to shorten the threaded part as it was too long. I cut them down and then ground them to a taper so they’d be easy to install.

The gate frames

For the part that mounts the gate to the L bolts – I found some barrel bolts (these are typically used to keep a gate/door closed) that would fit over the L bolts. Easy. They just needed minimal modification to work. The gate frames are a very simple design – basically a square with a diagonal support. They’re held together with two 10″ lag bolts at each joint. They should be sufficiently strong for a garden fence!

Hanging the gates

With the hardware figured out and the gate frames complete, I installed them in their openings. I fitted a 2×4 top cap and tested the swing both ways to make sure there was clearance. The bottom gate only swings out because of the grade of the yard, but the top will swing both ways. And the top cap had sufficient clearance. Finally, I installed pickets on the two gates. Done and done.

Waiting for the wood to dry

Next, we’ll get some stain on the fence. For the stain, we’ll be using a solid color stain – the same stuff we used on the siding of the shop. Here’s a throwback pic of Oceana staining the siding on the shop so that you can see what I’m talking about.

It’ll be white and blue so it’ll match the house and the shop. I checked the moisture content of the lumber and it was still a tad wet. Not sopping wet, but in a week or two it should be dry enough to take the stain.

That’s all, folks

That’s all for now. Thanks for following along!