Better done than overdone, but I can't help myself...

[foxgrove]

Well, today is a good day to rest. Praise God for rest, it's glorious! Sadly, this rest is because my body said "Remember yesterday when you abused me for numerous hours??? Well, here's the bill..." Yeah, I overdid it, but it felt good to get a long standing project finished and get past the hump on another one. We were finally able to get the rear gate fixed, something that's been plaguing us for a couple of years.

About 3 years ago (yeah right... maybe three dog years!!) the wind caught our back gate unlatched and played with it on a particularly windy night. And boy does the wind play hard!! Ripped a chunk out of the 4x4 post just like ripping paper and threw our 40lb gate into the back lane, which is especially bad considering it opens inward.

We attempted to make the best of it by switching the gate around to swing the other way and fastened it to the post... sadly we reused the now old and barely sufficient gate hardware again and when the latch failed the next time in a big wind (we do like our winds here apparently... ) whoosh, off goes most of the gate, leaving behind the post siderail and hinges, just swingin there like a kid hanging on momma's hand... just a lot less cute.

So, for the past couple of years, we just propped it up as a barrier instead of an actual gate and made do. It's not that boards are expensive enough that they're out of reach, it's just that the urgency of fixing it never really rose to the level of "more important to fix it than these other things." I imagine more than a couple of you you know how that goes. Plus, there was that whole thing of how to fix it so I wouldn't be doing that again next year, feeling like a moron all over again.

Well, in the interim, my sweet genius of a wife decided to go shopping and boy does she know how to shop. Yesterday when we were finished cutting shelves for our bedroom closet / 3d printer station (no, the proper word is nerd... a geek collects things, a nerd uses them!  )

I thought to myself, "Paul"... and I knew it was me talking to myself 'cause they were wearing my underwear... "Paul," I said, "it's not conna cost that many spoons to fix one side of a gate and put it back up." "Wow... such wisdom" I said, garnering a rather odd look from my wife who somehow had percieved the words that were running through my head. Aparently, when wisdom is too much, it spills out your mouth too...

Well, it's an easy job so, away we go. Fourty pounds split between two people is an amazingly large amount of weight... especially when it's closer to eighty pounds... but I digress. After taking stock of what wood we'd need, we remembered our daughter was not longer using the treated wood on the backyard sandbox as the sandbox was now in the front yard and using a different setup.

Bingo, just the wood we'd need. Add in the 1x6 fence boards dad dropped off this spring and we had everything we'd need. Got going on it... even remembered how to run a skillsaw without removing any of my fingers. Yay!

So, the gate looked fabulous. we got the hinges set on it and moved it out to install it.

Here's where that little job kinda took a left turn... kinda one of those "give me 40 acres and I'll turn this rig around" kinda turns...

Somehow, in all the freezing and thawing and our neighbour (rental) throwing down boards to turn the backyard parking pad from a mudhole into a parking pad... the post moved. When I say moved, I don't mean it leaned... I mean, the whole sucker shifted towards our property about an inch, and then leaned in another 2! Somehow, that gate just didn't seem to fit the hole that it came out of anymore!

Well, we re-measured and found out what mother nature and car weight had done to our "carefully placed posts." Of course, when I looked at our back yard fence again, I remembered that we had built it 20 some years ago, and little to no maintenance had been done to it over the years. You know... I've seen dog's legs that were straighter than our poor ole fence!

"Huzza," said I... well... no, I didn't really. I thought it, but I'm only truly weird when I'm by myself. I think it came out more like, "sheeeeet! Better get the farm jack."

You know what, farm jacks are powerful! So am I, apparently. I thought I'd pre-empt the jack by pushing one of the center posts outward from the garage and accidentally snapped the sucker off at the bottom. But hey, the fence was straighter afterward!!    I'll take the good with the bad.

At this point, the one of us with a brain... and no, it wasn't me, myself, or I!!! My sweet lady , the one with common sense, made the observation that we didn't just need to move the post out, we needed it to stay there! Insert kowabunga guy with his sledgehammer and a makeshift shim. Kapow. It's moved over! Of course, it's still leaning, so out comes MacGyver. We can fix this, we have the technology... we'll just zip this sucker straight with the sawzall! ...of course, that would mean being able to locate where I left the sawzall blades.

Solution 2... out comes the skillsaw. Note that there is a hint about what you're supposed to have BEFORE you use this device... something about skill. I honestly thought I had skill right up until the blade caught that seam in the wood and went wildly off track, for several inches... before I noticed... { drat! } Ok, we're headed in kinda the right direction in any case, might as well finish the cut. Oops, forgotthat 7 1/2" skillsaws can't cut through 4x4s in one pass... I'll just turn it around... or maybe over... or... darn, I can only cut one side with this thing 'cause the fence is in the way!  { sigh }

Solution 3... out comes the handsaw!  The mighty mighty handsaw... the, piece of shall we talk about this later??? I'm sensing this is heading in the wrong direction... Hey, did you know that sawing is a whole lot more difficult when your shoulder feels like someone is hammering on it with a hammer. Thank God for wood that splits easily. Pity it's following the wonky cut that the skillsaw made... So, now it looks like some rabid beaver with seriously skewed directional sense got all tooth friendly with an entire side of our poor fence post. { double sigh }  Oh, and it still leans 3/4" into the path of the gate!

Super Jo to the rescue. She had this picture in her head of turning the back gate and post into a small pergola... she even knew how to do it! And I figured out that if I use some trim boards, I can even make it look half way presentable!!

So... a little more pushing, a few boards screwed in, and voila... a square opening of the right size. Hung the gate and boy does it ever look nice.  It's so nice to have a gate that closes and latches itself and won't be flying off into the unknown with every big blow we have. Now, I can sit back and just ache with a smile on my face. The owies are big but hey, we gont stuff done!!  Yeeeeaaaah booooooiiiiieeee!

[ronr]

Video on news at 10:00??  Or at least pics.  LOL

[looneylane]

Holy cow that is crazy Fox I do know about those prairie winds tearing stuff up we had our big spruce ripped off its bottom then the wind jumped over the house taking a few shingles then tore our fence right out of the ground and we were the lucky ones there were travel trailers thrown all over town... Man you need a few spoons? I would share but I bent mine off trying to get the summer tires on lol

[Robby]

there were travel trailers thrown all over town...

We had a tornado come through about 5 weeks ago now, and there was a family that got their tornado warning phone call, and they all met up in the kitchen/dinning room to discuss what they were going to do. They stood there talking so long the tornado picked up their double wide, and finally shook them out of it about a half-mile from where they started, then dropped it beside them.

[looneylane]

Robby it would be funny if it weren't so true how strong weather events can be

[Robby]

My point was, that they got the call to get to safety, BUT THEY CHOSE TO STAND AROUND IN THE KITCHEN AND TALK, UNTIL THE TORNADO LITERALLY PICKED UP THEIR HOUSE. How do you stand and talk long enough for the tornado to reach you???? The conversation should be, "OK, get in the car we are going to the storm shelter". Nothing else should be said. That takes about  seconds to say, they talked for 5 minutes or more. And eveyone of them was over 21, we are not talking about stupid kids this is supposed to be grown folk. Can you make sense of this? I can't.

[ronr]

GOT TO have a plan ahead of time because the warning can come with little notice. 

Yea there might be a chance all day but they can spin up quick !!! 

[foxgrove]

It's amazing what a big wind can do. I used to think we got frequent winds until we stayed in Saskatchewan for a coupel of weeks. Man does that place ever blow!! 

Can't say we've had to worry about tornadoes dropping in on us here in the city... we've had more than a few in the area but not in the quantity or frequency that hits the middle of tornado alley. Of course, you never know, right? Yeah, when the warning comes, get yer arse in the shelter and stay there. Even I know that one!

I'll see if I can get my arm to lift up high enough to get a pic of the new gate. 

[Robby]

I guess we are lucky in that we live in a bowl. Even though we are on a hill the surrounding areas are higher than we are. Storms and tornado's either go around, just fly over us. But the fact this area is quickly becoming the most active are in the country, it's just a matter of time.

For a while I was on the storm spotter team. I grew up standing on the front porch with my mom, watching the clouds come over us. That lead me to a love for weather watching. I have never been afraid of the weather, I know the signs to watch for, but in the last year or two,  I've got to where as soon as a storm watch comes out, we head to the community storm shelter. I know by the time I get myself and Aaron ready  and out the door, any bad storm will be on top of us.