After making the decision to redo everything in the chicken yard, which segued into redoing one of the main gates, we now have the disassembled gate that will be getting reassembled as a longer gate, with some modifications. There are two tubes of different sizes that slide into each other to allow for an adjustment of the ends to create different lengths of gate. Since we're making a gate that's longer than what this setup allows, I'll have to use the two larger tubes and one narrower tube to create an extra long tube assembly. To do the bottom tube setup, I had to use some scrap round tubing, one of them had a smaller tube welded in the larger, which kind of recreated the same setup as with the other tubing. With this other tube setup done, I was able to get the metal frame setup assembled, so I can then move on to getting the 2x4's in place. With the 2x4's in place and the tubes secured with screws through the 2x4s and frame ends, the next move was to hang the gate frame. Since the post side of the hinges were spaced differently due to the different construction of the old panel, I had to remove one of the hinge lugs from the post and drill a new hole that was closer to the other hinge lug to allow for the hanging of the gate frame. After hanging the gate frame on one of the hinge lugs, I marked and drilled the new hole and installed the other hinge lug, allowing me to hang the gate as intended. With the gate hung, I can start attaching the pickets. As I hung the pickets, I found that at the very end, there was only enough room to install maybe a half picket. Only problem with this is the metal frame would make it a little difficult, as it would require holes to be drilled to accommodate sheet metal screws. I ended up removing half the pickets and attaching them from the other end up to the middle, leaving the narrow gap in the middle. The solution here was to attach a final picket right in the middle over the narrow gap. At least by putting this odd picket in the middle, it kind of looks like an intentional design of the gate. With the gate all done, the last things to do was install the hinges and the latches in the spots to allow them to mate with the other gate. I also installed the caster to give that added support so the gate will not slowly sag over time. This new gate is much lighter and easier to move and closes nice and flush with the other gate, no odd gaps or twisting which made the whole thing look cheap. With our gates set up as intended I can move on to other bigger and better things, namely the chicken yard.
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