And the Ben Pen is in action!

Steve spent father's day whippin' out the remainder of the fence and man, does it look awesome!

But this did not start before we hit up Pine State Biscuits on Alberta for breakfast sammies-yum! and of course, Steve had to open his father's day gift which included several 22oz craft beers, a super power weeder (have I ever mentioned that Steve LOVES to pick weeds?), and a handmade card with Ben scribbles inside. 

We just have a few last projects to be 100% done.
     1. put on gate hardware (it's on it's way to our casa as I type)
     2. stain this puppy-we have no clue what color to do so I need some help-anyone have any suggestions?
     3. put on copper caps with construction bond-this also entails making all the 4x4s the same height
     4. getting stronger springs for the wheels
     5. pouring concrete where the wheels hit as right now they go over the dirt (there are some      concrete and quartzite chunks in place for now. 

Wondering why we didn't just make life easier by having the gate open from the other side?  I thought that it would look better to have the gate hardware on the south side (side where the neighbor's and our driveway connect) and we usually have all of our trash cans on the other side by the chimney so I foresaw the future and getting quite frustrated each time I needed to move trash cans in order to go in and out of the gate.  Also, Steve rides his bike to/from work daily and usually comes up the south side of the driveway so it made sense to have it open from the south side.
It is supposed to be 85 tomorrow and I can't wait to test out the new set up. 

Mini gate goes in

One advantage of Steve's work place is getting to take half day Fridays during the summer (that is if he puts in his hours earlier in the week), so today he was home by two!  He got right to work (and I joined in once Ben went down for his nap) piecing together what he could on the large gate, finishing up the small fence area next to the chimney

and then taking on the tedious task of figuring out which pieces of wood that we have we still needed to use and what we needed to purchase.  We are hoping that this will be our last trudge out to Custom Cedar Products.
Anyways, a few pix of the progress this afternoon/tonight!  A well deserved glass of wine up next!

old gate removed, turned on side and acting as temporary dog barrier...we considered replacing the 4x4s but they are in concrete and that task just seemed like a little too much to take on right now-plus not worth messing with it since it is so close to the foundation of the casa

measuring the wire, marking with sharpie and then saw-sawing it up

hinges just about done (we picked these up from Mr Plywood today-nothin' special but they'll do the trick and are black like the rest of the hardware

We set up the gate to swing out towards the driveway and side of house and plan to figure out some sort of inconspicuous latch the we can use to keep it open when we want full access between the backyard and driveway.  It is temporarily bungeed shut to keep the pup in until the new latch arrives.

you can see the old gate in this pix-yuck!

Fence Gate Hardware

I headed off to Winks hardware on SE Stark today to find some gate hardware for our fence since I was not so fond of what they offered at Home Depot.  I was so proud of myself for finding what I thought was an awesome latch (with the help of the staff, of course, who are so friendly and helpful).  What I found was an American made (score 2 extra points, right?) latch by Acorn company like the one below.

Acorn Thumb Latch Bean

However, when Steve got to looking at the latch tonight, he discovered that it would not work because it was not deep enough to go through our 4x4s.

Back to the drawing board.  Finding a good latch that was under $30 was too easy, right?

After hunting around the internet tonight, I found several latches that I really liked but spending over $75 (+ s and h) on a latch seems a little steep being that this fence is costing a ton (due to the clear cedar) and $75 seemed like too much to spend after finding a perfectly decent $25 latch.  Here is an example of a really nice arts and crafts-ish (but somehow a bit southwestern at the same time) latch that I found for $79 + $5 for the extra length needed to fit a 4x4 at Wild West Hardware

But then we came across this Suffolk Latch from Hinge and Latch:

not exactly the latch but very similar

We decided on this because it accommodates a 4x4 and will work nicely with the black hinges and post brackets.  And it was just $29.  I was also able to purchase an extra latch only piece for $15 that we will use when we rebuild the small gate that goes between the garage and house (we don't want Ben to have constant free reign of the driveway area and backyard).  So all together (after s+h), I spent $57 for two different latches instead of around $100 for just one.  Excited for it to arrive and get this fence finished!

Yard in bloom

I took some time this weekend to plant a few flowers in our front yard pots.

 Also realized that watering plants in pots that are covered (therefore get no rain-ha) need to be watered-duh!

A few pix of our yard in bloom...it really is filling in well!

our mock orange is outta control!  gotta get that beast upright

our accolade elm has grown over 3' in a year...anxious to see what this awkward tween does this year

we thought the crepe myrtle had died but turns out it survived!  Just a few dead pieces we need to trim

we love the colors of the climbing rose and also are enjoying the surprise purple flowering plant in the right hand upper corner

path we hope to finish up this summer

you can barely see the bush beans sprouting up

luvin the peonies from our garden (they smell ah-maz-ing!) in the new (well new to me) Lonesomeville Pottery Chickadee vase (made in Portland) I nabbed from Found on Fremont this weekend...

I think this is an irregular vase due to the spots and slight color distortion on the bottom but I LURV it none-the-less

The gate is coming along again

Steve finally found some time to get back to the fence this past weekend.  On Saturday he went full speed ahead but well, on Sunday, he got distracted and efforts went towards making the backyard entertaining ready. This week he plans to figure out what other pieces of wood he needs to complete the fence and I hope to get the cedar store on Thursday when I am without babe. 

Now we just need to pick up one more wheel since this fence is one big dude and is H-E-A-V-Y.  Also need to research some fence hardware to lock/open/close it since I am definitely not in like at all with the stuff at Home Depot.  I would really like something that allows us to open and close it from each side without having to do the little string rig up deal-e-o that you see on many simple gates. 

put on the first hinge without a problem

this is where the problem arose; Steve had to drill out the ground bracket in order to mount the lower hinge on top of the bracket....what a pain but ended up being a pretty easy fix

drilling a support bracket

and the gate goes up

you can so the spring/wheel hardware on the left side of the pix; getting ready to drill on the wheel

wheel #1-to put a second wheel on the other side to hold this big sucker up

there is about a 1/8" clearance on the ground with just one wheel attached

And another look at the gate (yes, we still have that huge pile of compost that we need to finish spreading)

We also made a trip to Mr. Plywood on Stark and found these fence post caps...I was eye-ing the beefier post caps, however, they don't work (And are at least $10 a pop more) as they will not fit with the clearance between the gate and the fixed posts and where the fence posts connects with the garage.  We simple need to level out all the posts and attach these toppers with a little construction adhesive.

And Steve's backyard progress...

Steve removed the rest of the pavers and small rubble and readied the area for some sod....lovely mud pit right now and my clean, mopped floors are already covered in doggy prints-motivation to get some sod STAT!

Steve added dug up portland potatoes rocks around the new bench and filled on with pebbles to cut down on dirt and mess

added more dig up rock around these pots which we plan to fill with Bamboo (more on that endeavor soon)

this is just funny as all these tall flowers sprouted out of nowhere and we kinda have a forest in the NW corner of our yard