It’s been 3 years since we had our horizontal fence built.

One of our very first posts, if ya care to see it here.

It’s cedar, and cedar isn’t forever. So it’s no surprise that both gates are staring to droop a little.

Ok, maybe they droop a lot……

Time to see what we can do about that.

We started with a Homax Easy Gate Kit from the Home Depot

Jamie took all the old slats off, they were just screwed on, and set them aside because most of them are all going right back on. (or possibly on another project)

We cut new pressure treated 2 X 4’s, a bit taller this time. Almost 7 feet. I’d always thought that the old gate was just a little short so we took it up to the height of the fence.

The fence kit simply screws on to the 2 X 4’s……

I attached the whole frame together on the floor of the garage to keep all the pieces level.

It’s not a good idea to build the gate while hanging. Or it will be wonky.

Then we hung it in the open space with the attached hinges.

We added 2 more hinges just to be safe…..the wood is extremely wet and heavy.

Here she is where the old gate used to be.

Love that height much better already.

Then we reattached the old slats, “Every Part of the Buffalo”, ya know?

We used a 3/4 inch scrap board to gage the distance between slats and a level to keep them all looking straight.

Way, Much More Better already…am I right?

We changed things up slightly by only doing slats on the front side, just like the fence. The old gate had slats on both sides for no real reason, now it’s much more consistent.

Except now, we see the unstained back sides of the boards……but not for too long.

I slapped some left-over “Russet” stain on all the wood that was either new, or newly revealed.

Remember the “Russet” stain?  Took us several tries to decide that we liked it with 1/4 of the colorant added to the clear stain. Then we had our dear friend Chuck spray the entire fence…..and he did a knock-out job. Always does.

Here’s what the gate should have looked like all along. (minus the row of screw holes along the left side)

…and it looks the even better on back side,

Now, with all the slats lining up with the fence , our gate looks more continuous and just plain beautiful.

Now on to tackle gate number 2…..Hopefully in the next few weeks.