Saturday, September 15, 2018

...in with the new.

It took the gate guys (who, it turns out, are brothers) about two hours to install the new gate. They had to do some light spot-welding as well as drill into the concrete posts to attach the new supports. We're both very happy with the result.

The view from outside our back yard.

We picked a green color for the gate so that it blends in better with its surroundings. It's strong, swings easily, and looks great. It turns out that it's exactly what we wanted. Funny how that can happen.

The view from inside the back yard.

While the guys were here, I asked them to do some measurements so they can prepare estimates for two other jobs we'd like done. First, our old garage door has done its time and we want to replace it. A new sectional automatic door will be a nice upgrade from the manual folding door we have now. The current door is showing its age and is becoming more and more difficult to open and close.

We also want to replace the mostly broken metal folding shutters on the back of the house (two bedrooms and the bathroom). The guys told us that new roll-down shutters can work on solar power, so we can open and close them from inside the house without running electricity to them or having to pierce the walls for interior handles. It will be nice to be able to close the shutters without needing to open the windows as we do now.

I let you know how it goes.

14 comments:

  1. Very nice gates. As I hear, and say to myself now, they will see you out. Solar powered shutters? What a world we live in and we can only imagine the future.

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  2. a lovely change from the old gate. auto garage doors are da bomb! and a new dishwasher too; you guys are busy!

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  3. Great looking new gate! And I love the idea of solar-powered shutters. That would be great here!

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  4. Oooh, that will be un store over your windows, then? I teach that to my French 3 class in the first unit of the year as part of a huge vocab list of things in a home. They are always very confused about what this exterior blind thing is. So, I will be happy to see photos of yours, whenever you get them.

    Love the gate! Looks great, and I'm very glad you are so happy with it.

    Hey, how do you say garage door, by the way? I assume they don't use porte?
    Judy

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    1. In French, a garage door is a porte de garage. Depending on its type it could be : une porte de garage automatique, basculante, sectionnelle, enroulante, coulissante or whatever you think might apply!

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    2. P.S. You could say, for instance : une porte de garage coulissante bleue ou vert pâle.

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  5. The new gate is beautiful and the color works well.

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  6. This gate looks really good. The color is a great choice and it's functional as well. I love the European shutters. we had them when we lived in Stuttgart, but they weren't solar powered.

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  7. That gate looks like it has always been there! The dark green color is very attractive, too. I, too, will be interested in that new vocab word for a garage "door"!

    Mary in Oregon

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  8. two hours I would say it went smoothly.
    Coffee is on

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  9. andrew, hold on as we leap into the 21st century!

    anne marie, we've lived in this house longer than we've lived anywhere, and things wear out and need to be replaced! Who knew?

    mitch, it never occurred to me, so I was surprised, too!

    melinda, :)

    judy, yes, they are "stores." Traditional shutters are called "volets," I think. And, as chm says, a garage door is "une porte de garage." Ours will be "sectionnelle et automatique," if we decide to get it.

    evelyn, thanks!

    thickethouse, we have roll-down shutters on two windows: the bathroom (old and difficult to manipulate) and the kitchen (we had it installed in 2008, still works great). Both have wands inside the house - holes had to be drilled through the walls to install the wands.

    mary, I thought the same thing, along with "why didn't we get this done earlier?" Of course, there's an answer for that...

    peppylade, yes, they knew what they were doing.

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  10. Re the solar powered shutters: will you still be able to operate them if the sun doesn't shine?

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Tell me what you think!