GATES
Cheap and easy gates that are fully functional can be yours in no time at all.
Run to the hardware store and buy yourself some foam insulation board. 2" is the thickness I use. The blue stuff made by Dow. Decide how wide you're going to make it and measure it off. I cut mine three inches wide, 48" long. You'll need to rails the same length. One for top and bottom.
There's lots of debate about what to cut styro with. Here's my prefered tool. The common box knife. It doesn't make a perfect cut which I prefer because I don't want my gates to look new. Sloppy is good. You can also use a woodsaw, electric styro cutter or a saber saw. My way there's no stink and no real mess. I make a big enough mess a few steps from now.
Once your got them cut to your satisfaction clamp those babies together. If you don't have clamps just repeat the use a dab of hot glue between them to keep them together. It'll make a small tear when you take them apart but it won't hurt a thing otherwise.
Measure for your pipe holes. Spacing is entirely up to you. You can either match it to the spacing on your fence or wing it and make it entirely different. I went for entirely different and nobody said a word. At least not to my face. Consistency is the only key here. Test mark your measurements and make sure you're not going to wind up with some big gap at the ends of your gate(s).
My preference when drilling is a cordless drill. Why you ask. Because my garage is such a mess I can't find the one with the cord on it. I use a 3/4" wood boring bit to make my holes. I do this because I use 1/2" pvc pipe that just happens to have an outside diameter of 3/4". Perfect fit every time.
Remember to wear safety glasses. This stuff gets everywhere.
Holes are drilled. There's chunks of blue foam everywhere. Very important that you keep track of which end is which. Unless you made exact measurements and drilled perfectly straight the hole won't line up if you spin one piece around. Mark one set of ends. Don't laugh at me here. You'll be mad if you start gluing things in place only to find out your gate is catty-wompus because you didn't take two seconds to mark the ends.
O.K. See those uprights on both ends. You have to make a few more styro cuts. Of course they need to be the same width but the height is entirely up to you. I went with 40". These piece are a big factor in the stability of your gate. Don't make the gate without them because it won't stay together. I tried it, it doesn't work.
Here's a close-up shot of the uprights. I drove pieces of cut up coat hanger through the top rail into the upright to hold it in place then hot glued the heck out of it. If your hot glue gun has been plugged in a long time don't use the glue straight out of it. It'll be too hot and melt your styro. Shoot that glue onto something else and dispose of it when it cools. Now use the cooler hot glue and spread it all over the seams where these pieces come together. Don't worry if it gets all over the place. It looks cool when painted black. The more glue, the stronger the bond, the tougher your gate.
While you're doing all this inside make someone stand outside and paint all the bars for your fence. You'll need them in a few minutes.
I know you already saw this photo but look at it again. We've started intsalling the bars. We set the bottom rail flush on the floor and put on long bar in and then a short bar and alternated all the way across. We then hot glued like mad fiends again. Remember the warning above about hot glue. Don't let it eat through your styro because it's too hot.
Here we are hot gluing like there's no tomorrow after we finished putting all the bars in. When we'd finished gluing the tops of the bars on the top and bottom rail we turned the whole thing over and did the bottoms of the rails too. You need to make sure you don't slop too much hot glue in the bottom end piece of pvc that your going to slide over your rebar later. When it's all dried we broke out the airless sprayer and coated the blue styro with black enamel paint. Regular spray paint will eat the styro so be careful.
When we went to install them in the ground I drove a 5' piece of rebar about two feet in the ground. I slid a hose clamp over the rebar and fastened it in place at about 2 inches off the ground. Then I slid a flat washer over the rebar and rested it on top of the hose clamp. Once it was in place I slid the gate section down over it right into one of the end pieces of pvc pipe. Second year in use for two of my gate sections and they just needed a little hot glue touch up this season.
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