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third time’s a charm
10 Oct 07
Summer, 2003, and Jodi and I have just moved into our new house. Our neighbours to the south have just put up a new fence between our properties, quite recently before we moved in. Our property has a fence along the back which is a little bit dilapidated and the gate hangs open all the time and can’t be closed properly because it rubs on the ground. So one of my first fixer-upper jobs after moving in, on a hot day in late July, is to take the gate off, drill some holes, and remount it with a simply latch. Suddenly we have a working gate, and the guys who live in the crack house out back no longer have an open invitation to cut through our back yard on the way to the variety store to buy pepperoni and smokes.
Unfortunately, it turns out our neighbour is one of those guys who gets almost done a job and then leaves the last little bit undone for a while. Jodi and I have NO idea what that’s like. So in August we went away on vacation and asked a friend to come by and feed the cats. Our friend dutifully comes by and finds that he can’t get the gate open. It just so happens he used to work as a mover, so in fact he CAN get the gate open, but it won’t properly close again. Our neighbour had finally finished bracing his new fence, and in the process has fucked up my gate. We find we can force the gate shut and that friction will keep it there, but this only works for August humidity. Once January rolls around, either the gate or the ground or both shrink in such away that, once again the gate hangs open and the crack dudes have an open invitation to cut through.
Finally, after a year or so of thinking about doing something about it, I figured out a new solution that involved cutting off a piece of the gate and putting on a bolt latch that fits into a whole drilled into the fence. This works well in dry weather, but once things get humid again, the gate sticks mightily, and over the past summer just seems to get worse. Perhaps the ground is shifting, or perhaps it’s because I keep backing into the fence when parking the car.
At any rate, over the past couple days I’ve attempted a third solution. With the help of a saw, a chisel, and my newly purchased 8″ rasp, I’ve removed a few hunks of wood from the gate and repositioned the bolt.
If you knew what to look for, you could see evidence of all the previous attempts to fix this thing, along with the various erosion effects of slamming this rickety thing shut. Hopefully this one will last for a while. Meanwhile, you can fantasize along with Jodi and me about the day when our fence looks like this:
Posted by pzed on October 10, 2007 at 8.34pm
Categories: every day, graven images
Comments on "third time’s a charm"
Pepperoni! I ordered jalapeno.
I think the next step should be to paint fake beaver footprints on the fence, going from the ground up to the giant gouge that the gate made in the fence this summer. Also, perhaps if we cut down the trees that are slowly pushing our back fence over, the gate would stop shifting closer and closer to the neighbour’s fence each year. We can plant bamboo back there instead.
Posted by jodi on October 10, 2007 at 8.50pm :: link
Y’know, I’m not so sure the trees aren’t holding the fence up. In the picture you can see a small piece of wood that the bolt is now resting on; I had wanted to make this out of Scrabble® tiles, but they weren’t thick enough, and I couldn’t decide what to say. I was thinking maybe “yes”, a direct reference to one of your favourite artistes.
Posted by pzed on October 10, 2007 at 9.03pm :: link
