So I made a thing. Well, strictly speaking I designed a thing that then got made by someone else.
We’d been looking for a new gate for some time, but never really found something we liked. I ended up drawing something in AutoCAD (of course) – taking inspiration from a number of images I found on the web – and we took it to Leutwiler SA, a local company who makes custom gates and fences.
The design I made – which was in any case for just the cosmetic stuff, nothing structural – needed some tweaks: once the 3mm steel was lasercut (although frankly it might have been cut with a water jet – I should really have asked what technique they used), we realised that the trunk and branches of the tree on the left panel reduced its rigidity significantly (we knew this would happen from the beginning but somehow hoped it would be OK with thick enough material: it turns out this wasn’t the case). Luckily the fabricator was able to go in and add some strategic welds for rigidity while keeping the overall aesthetic.
The resulting gate was then powder coated with a colour of our choosing, before the final product was finally installed this week.
This may not seem like a big deal to those of you who are used to seeing your abstract designs made concrete, but it’s a rare thing for me to see my bits become atoms. It’s a very nice feeling, and I will say the results are great.
The installers took lots of pictures of the finished product: it was so nice to see how proud they were of their (and – to some degree – my!) work. With the morning sun shining through the design, it’s really quite lovely.
As is often the way with these things, when you “fix” one thing it just highlights the thing next to it that also needs “fixing”. So the next thing we had to deal with was the battered postbox that came with the house when we moved in.
This one we got “off the shelf”, of course.
Let’s see what’s next!
