Garden Gates

The gate to our backyard (which is on the side our Rancher) is in serious need of an upgrade! It's one of those outside projects we put off. Which is crazy since, we did some many other outside DIY updates: painted our house, installed sod, redid our garden beds, painted our front door and prettied up our front porch to name a several  few projects. To be honest we rarely use our side gate, it mostly used for bringing the lawn mower out to mow the lawn. BUT, its an eyesore and its about time we fixed, after three years of it looking a mess.


The plan is to move our excising fence forward about 8 feet which will extend the interior side our backyard and give is a spot to place our trash, recycle and green waste containers. Right now they are lazily placed on the side our house and I want them out of site! I'm thinking we keep in the same spot they are in now, except along the fence line, and place screen in front our them. 

After we bring our fence line forward, we'll need to build a new gate. This is the fun part! I've been gathering ideas and trying to 'pin-point' our gate style. Do we want a single gate, a double gate? Curved? With lattice? With a door handle? Who know there were so many pretty & cool ideas. Oh, and after we do our gate update, I'll be officially calling the gate, our garden gate :) I've seen so many gates styles and narrowed it down to our musts: Create privacy, Pleasing to the Eye, Go with the style of our house, Can be locked. Below are Gate Styles I Like.


I've always loved the looked of gates with a top curved. I love how this gate is private and pretty. I also like the black exposed hardware.

{via Pinterest}

Again, I love the curve on the gate. I would place the boards closer together.

{via Pinterest}

I think the lattice on top of this gate is very pretty. I would want our gate lower and not so close to our eves. I think a little breathing room is a good thing :)

{via Pinterest}

I pretty much adore everything about this gate. First, I love that house is shingles (like our home) I like the pretty door handle and the down curve of the gate. Most door curved gates I looked at didn't offer much privacy, this gate offers plenty of privacy. I also like that this garden gate reminds me of a pretty door. Another plus, is they painted the gate to match the house and it works seamlessly! I also love the blooming vines. We have vines on the side our our house, there are finally blooming again and I would love add more on the side our house. 

{via Defining Your Home}

Obviously this gate won't work for our needs, since we want a private gate. But I love the large decorative exposed hinges. It really gives this garden gate a custom look. 

{via Pinterest}

Now that I've shared with you gate styles I like, here's gate hardware I also like. This decorative gate kit comes with everything (I like the exposed hinges, and pretty handle) The gate kit style is kind-of cottage like, and I like that look and think it could work well with our home style. 

Out of all the gates, I've been looking at I favor the one below the most. I think with a few modification to fit our needs we could make a pretty gate very similar to this one. 

{via Pinterest}

After narrowing down the gate styles, I noticed I'm most drawn to gates that a painted. Which is odd, because typically I don't like fences or gates that are painted. I prefer the natural wood, I usually cringe when I see a yellow house, and then the attached fence is also painted yellow. But since were about to do our gate upgrade, I'm rethinking my previous stance and would be open to painting our gate white, but I would want to keep our fence natural wood. 

What gate style do you prefer most? Do you like painted garden gates or natural?

Getting Caulky

I was a little cocky going into the weekend thinking we'd wrap-up our DIY Door Casing Project we've been working on, boy was I wrong! But that's how most DIY Projects go, now that we have a little one again & a tween working on a big school project. The good news is, all the framing of our doorways is complete! The last time you saw our doorway casings, we framed our doorways with thick molding (almost 4 inches thick) and added a simple header using a 1x1 and a 2x1. You can read more about our inspiration for the DIY Casing Project here. Here's how it looked the last time you saw our door ways.

And the bottom of our baseboards looked 5ike this (not cute) 

Since then, we added a top trim piece to our doorways using two 1x1s and 2x1 in the middle section. I love how simple the doorway headers now look, to me they really fit the style of our California Rancher. 

Then we trimmed out the bottom of the doorway piece with the 4x1 piece, with mitered corner cuts. To hide the inside seam of the doorways, we used pieces of lattice. Again we mitered each corner cut. Oh, when I say 'we' I mean Hasani! I marked all the cuts using a 45 degree angle and he made all the cuts. 

Can I just say how much I'm also in LOVE with the bottom of our doorways! They look so polished and nice next to our existing baseboards! I like I said I'm in love! 

After the doorways were finished being framed out, it was time for my to get caulky. I had a ton of wood to caulk, a ton! For all the seams, I used caulk to fill in the nail holes and knots in the wood I used wood filler. Our doorway casing project has started a snowball effect around our house. As I've already mentioned, I plan on repainting the our baseboard trim (too bad I didn't get to it over the weekend) So with that said, after seeing how amazing our doorways were looking we decided it was finally time to replace our old dated small front door trim. We like our existing doorway trim that surrounds our garage door, so we bought the same trim. 

While Hasani was removing the old front door trim, he discovered a key hidden in the wall. Crazy huh? 

Next Hasani trimmed our existing baseboards to fit our new wider width door trim. Then I measured the miter corners and Hasani did the mitered cuts. Before Hasani nailed the new doorway trim in, I cleaned up all the drywall with a broom. It felt so good, it get to clean behind the old door trim, lol.  If you've ever removed an old piece of trim, you know exactly what I'm talking about, lol. Yup, I just added another project to my re-painting trim project and I'll be touching up paint on our front door surrounds. 


Here's how the door looks right now, pre-caulk and glossy white paint. 

Another snowball affect: we're finally getting around to added a new floor transition piece between the living room and dining room doorway. We bought an unfinished oak transition, I stained the piece Early American with left over stain from refinishing our hardwood floors last year and then applied a clean coat of polythene (also a left over from our hardwood floors) The new transition piece will help add a cohesive look between our original hardwood floors and our faux-wood floors, we installed two years ago replacing our ugly cracked tile. I'm really happy about this 'snowball affect,' because floor transitions are a good thing.

Next we need to sand, prime and then finally paint our new doorway casings and install our new doorway transition piece. Even though there's still a lot to do, I'm super excited about how doorways look! Oh, how I can't wait to see our DIY Door Casing completed and our baseboards glossy white again. I hope by Monday night, after the baby and tween head to bed, I'll be sanding and then priming our doorway casings and new front door trim. 


What do you think of our DIY Door Casing Project so far? Are you in love with the bottom of our doorway baseboards like I am? What do you think our our doorway headers, perfect addition to our little rancher? 


Any snowball effect projects happen in your casa lately? Have you found anything odd when your removed baseboards in the past like we have?