Project: Building a Side Gate

valve90210 · 6 Oct 2014 at 16:31

Hi All

I'm looking to sort out a side gate to give a bit more privacy down the side of my house and to make the passage way a more useable space.

Obviously on one side of the passage way is my house, the other side is a brick outhouse/shed belonging to the neighbours. I have asked about attaching gate posts etc to the brickwork and have been told that it's fine to do so.

The passage way is approximately 6 feet wide ands has a three foot concrete path running down it. The path is about a foot from the wall on the house side and 2 feet from the outhouse wall.

My plan is for a 6 foot x 4 foot featherboard gate to be hinged on the house wall and then to build a framework to fill the gap on the other side. I did look at a single 6foot gate but as they length of the passage where I am building the gate is only about 14feet long it would make too much of the passage unuseable due to the swing of the gate.

I have done a lot of ringing around to find somewhere that would make me up a gate as most tend to be 3 feet wide, and they are going to a) Cost a fair bit of money and b) take 3 or 4 weeks to be produced....

So, I'm wondering how easy/hard it would be to make my own featherboard gate??

I've done some googling and by the looks of things it 'should' be a fairly simple process (albeit a bit time consuming to ensure the featherboarding was straight and level etc).

Has anyone (who isn't a carpenter

) had a go at making their own gates and if so how did you find it??

valve90210 · 6 Oct 2014 at 17:22

I thought I had some photos on my phone but sadly not so I couldn't add them, but will try to do so when I get home this evening.

valve90210 · 6 Oct 2014 at 18:38

Got a couple of not great pics when I got home, hopefully gives a bit of an idea of the situation.

That full frame featheredge is exactly the sort if thing I'm thinking of.

The tongue and grove one looks great, nice job!

(Sorry if pics are massive, currently on my phone so can't tell what size they are)

valve90210 · 7 Oct 2014 at 14:47

I've been thinking about this gate and think a full frame gate would be my best option for strength and for simplicity in the making of it - make the frame then feather board...

I saw a good video on doing such a gate yesterday which seemed nice and simple. The framework was put together with Buttjoints which were biscuited, glued and then screwed together at an angle through from the top and the bottom of the joint.

I don't have a biscuit jointer and don't really like the idea of the screwing at an angle as I'm likely to mess that up and ruin perfectly good wood. lol

My thought is that it would better to do half-lapped corners (I have a sliding mitre saw which I can use with it's depth stop to cut away the bits I need to remove) Then screw through the overlap from the front or back (making sure to then be careful when nailing the featherboard onto the frame so I don't try to nail through a screw... lol

Does this sound like a reasonable idea?

valve90210 · 7 Oct 2014 at 14:53

Just saw that gate Ironhorse, do you have a pic of it from the front?

valve90210 · 7 Oct 2014 at 15:25

Why don't you like featheredge board?

valve90210 · 8 Oct 2014 at 07:03

I can see that would be a good way of doing the joins but I'm going to be on quite a tight time scale for getting it done and having never done it I fear I would take all day doing just one joint...lol

You say the halflap joint could break the your joint if the gate bangs in the wind but it am also planning on screwing through both layers to hold them together that should give enough strength to stand up to that shouldn't it?

valve90210 · 15 Oct 2014 at 13:03

Last week I ordered up all my wood etc in preparation for getting on with building on Saturday...Cue the rain...

Friday, along with all my wood came torrential rain throughout the day and over night, Saturday's construction work was looking less likely, however my parents in true British fashion, were not to be put off and along they came bringing with them a pop-up gazebo to go over the driveway allowing us to work despite the rain.

After spending a good bit of time explaining to my Dad how I wanted the frame work to be constructed I finally managed to get it across to him (bless him, he's great at diy etc but not great at visualising things) and we started to crack on.

As it was tipping it down for a lot of the day, and because my phone is dying on me, I didn't take many photos but those below give some idea of the work we did and how it has progressed.

Framework for the side panel

Made slightly more complicated by the over hanging concrete block that forms the roof of the neighbours' outhouse but simply mounting one post onto the wall and a second on to that post it is nice and sturdy.

Until we can to do the digging out for the post that is next to the path, we weren't sure if we'd be able to concrete this post in place, as luck would have it we dug down easily (unlike everywhere I've tried digging previously here) and were able to get it concreted in place. so this frame is going nowhere!

You can see the old 'gate' in the background, it is so flimsy it will definitely be a simple task to remove it once my new gate is finished!

The side panel frame again:

See all that water in the hole with the fence post, that's from about 10 minutes of rain...it was tipping it down but we were lucky to have a break in the rain which allowed us to get the post concreted in place.

My first attempts at half lapping:

My dad thought this was a terrible and time consuming way of building the framework until I showed him how to do it using the depth stop on my sliding mitre saw, after which he agreed it was a good idea!

This is not the final gate!

Frame work all finished. After this was done we put together the frame for the gate (though I didn't get a photo)

Now 'all' that's left is featherboarding and hanging the gate...

valve90210 · 20 Oct 2014 at 14:46

Saturday morning was an early start for me as I had to load a couple of unused fence posts and a £20 box of unwanted wood screws into the car to be returned to the timber merchant. I also needed to pick up some hinges and bolts and a couple of lengths of 3 x 2 for the bracing of my gate.

Having done so, my parents arrived and we set about finishing off the gate.

The first job was adding the bracing to the gate followed by the hinges.

(the top of the gate is nearest the camera)

After a good bit of measuring and checking fit etc, we then feather boarded the gate. and got it into place.

A bit more work (and no pics sadly) and we got the side panel boarded too, along with a godo bit of discussion about how to mount the gate stop, we got that in place too. by lunchtime the baording was all finished and the gate fully hung and with top and bottom bolts in place.

Front

Back

All that remains to be done is a strip across the top of the gate (hence the gap that's there at the moment) to protect the tops of the feather board, and a lock which I'm currently deciding upon.

All in all I'm really quite pleased with the way it's turned out, it's really nice and solid and looks really smart.