We’ve been knocking out a lot of smaller to-do lists on the existing house while waiting for the bigger project to start. One of those nagging items was replacing our front gate. The photo above was taken during the first full summer we lived in the house (2001) – look at that pitiful mansard and sagging dormer, yikes. You can see two of the four original fence posts in that photo, along with a slightly sagging front gate. The rest of the “fencing” was a temporary wire fence that had been put in place to keep out animals? Look nicer than no fence? Who knows.
The story we were told was that the original fence had been stolen. This was not uncommon in these old neighborhoods where properties stood vacant and architectural relics were worth good money. There’s a street on the southern end of our neighborhood called Cherokee Street that was known as Antique Row, and it was a really booming place in the nineties and early 2000’s. So if you were missing something on your house, that was the first place to check. (I wrote about the structural stars in an old post here.)
We used to spend a lot of time in these stores, looking for old doors and hardware or mantels or other items we needed during those early stages of renovation. I was digging around the courtyard area of one place, and I saw these really beautiful old fence panels leaning up against the fence. After measuring how many linear feet there were – and getting the price for the panels (only $300, which seems crazy cheap to me now, but was really expensive at the time), we bought them. We contacted Eureka Forge and met the head blacksmith there, Todd Kinnikin. He made two new intermediate posts in that long run of fence, and divided the salvaged fencing into three equal sections for that area, plus one smaller section to the left of the existing gate. The tops of the salvaged fence were bent over and pretty beat up, but he straightened everything out, cleaned them up, painted, and installed them. He also made our steel front porch, and the post details there match the intermediate posts on the fence.
It looks really pretty in the snow.
But back to that old gate. You can see how junky it looks next to the fence. It leans, and those hinges are rusty and shot. The rusted chain is a good look too. There’s this pipe that sticks out of the ground to provide a place for the gate to latch, which makes the whole gate look like a cobbeled together afterthought. It doesn’t swing out anymore, and gets caught in odd angles when swinging in. We’ve tried several times over the years to get Eureka Forge to make a new gate for us, but Todd has passed away, and his son runs the business now and they are always swamped with work. It just never seemed to be a huge priority.
But this summer one of the brackets gave out on the shorter fence panel to the left of the gate, and M took the whole panel off to make sure that it wouldn’t “walk away”. So it looks really bad now with the missing fence panel and sad sagging gate. It was the kick in the pants we needed to get this work done.
I contacted two ornamental iron companies, and after a few weeks I received quotes back from both. They were pricing the repairs to the brackets and installation of the missing panel, and we also asked for a newly designed gate that would match the details of our existing fence. Both quotes were pretty similar (and both left me longing for those 2001 fence prices!), but we went with Classic Metal Craft because they had the most detailed quote and also didn’t look at me cross-eyed when I asked for shop drawings. The catch was they were 14-15 weeks out on their schedule, so we’ve been looking at this eyesore for months.
Two weeks ago they picked up the missing panel, and did final field measurements, and last week I received the first round of shop drawings.
It was pretty exciting to see just how GOOD the new gate was going to look compared to that old one. They had done what we asked – matched the details of the existing fence for the gate design. But when we looked at all the other wrought iron fences/gates on our street, we noticed that all of the gates had something different that helped to distinguish it as an entrance – an arched or pointed top. Since we have an arched top window detail on the house, I sent back this sketch with a revision idea. I also noted that their drawings were missing the bottom detail of the fence.
They revised the gate drawings and they look amazing. We inquired about the need for a cross brace, and they showed it on the drawings, but they said there are enough welds on the gate to prevent sagging over time. But we’re going to leave it there as an insurance policy. It’s a detail on most of the gates on our street.
Look how good the gate looks in the context of the rest of the fence. I can’t wait for it to be installed.
I optimistically bought the pine roping this year for the fence. We might go ahead and install it on just the long part of the fence for now, but I’m hoping that the gate and missing panel might get installed before Christmas. We’re planning some projects for the front of the house next year – historic replacement windows and erecting scaffolding to repaint the trim. It’s been sixteen years since we last did that, so three cheers for good prep work and paint! We’ll have to rip out the bushes, and so I’m also hoping to get a landscape plan in place for what I want this front yard to look like. I’d also love to remove the neighboring chain link fencing and install a simple black iron fence on the sides at the same time. It’s a snowball thing, I know, but I can imagine how much it will enhance our curb appeal, and how good it will look for our Thursday night blues gatherings when it’s done.
