Courtyard Project - Picking The Metal Slats

An update on our Courtyard Project and the wood Vs metal fence slats debate we have made a decision and are going with the more expensive but no maintenance option of metal slats.

I think it will look just as amazing in 10 years time as it does the day we install it and Mr P and I aren't one to do things half hearted, even if we don't intend to be living in this house in 10 years time, we still want it to be a quality home for the next person.

So we are doing a DIY job on the fence slats and installing them ourselves. We measured the distance between each of the limestone pillars with a laser measure, which is a million times easier than a tape measure I can tell you! At this point we didn't need to be 100% accurate because the slats are sold in standard lengths and then you cut them to size yourself, so this was just to work out how many lengths we need, to work out the budget.

We found a local company AliTimber who do the timber grain finish over aluminium - it won't warp, split or crack, it has UV sun and salt protection and a 10 year warranty. Sounds good to me!

We got a brochure to work out what lengths we need to order. We will also be ordering a gate from them in the same materials. Now onto the fun part, getting the samples and picking a colour.

We need to see how the samples will look at the front of the house taking into consideration all the other exterior features and house colours - the limestone courtyard, cream house render, our jarrah look garage door and charcoal driveway and roof.

As for the colours of the slats, we had 4 to chose from - from left to right there is Snow Gum, Bushwood, Western Red Cedar, Jarrah - don't you just love the native Australian names!

Now remember these are aluminum materials and I think they are doing a damn good job at pretending to be real wood - don't you? They each have a different type of grain running through them and the colours are pretty spot on mimicking real wood.

Straight away we felt the first 2 on the left were too light and looked a bit washed out against the limestone. It was down to our 2 righties ... Western Red Cedar and Jarrah.

The wood look slats also need to match in nicely with our new garage door - the Jarrah on the left is a closer match but I'm worried it is too red especially when up against the pale limestone.

Whereas the Western Red Cedar on the right has a more natural wood look.

They also need to look good against the limestone blocks as this is where they will be seen .... when placed here the Jarrah doesn't look as natural and the tone of it is very dark compared to the tone of the Western Red Cedar.

I thought back to my interior design training course studies which taught me that colour tones should always match and to pick the closest tone on tone you can if you want something to match or pick the biggest contrast if you want to make a statement .... in this case I'm going for a match of tones and it's definitely the Western Red Cedar tone of wood that matches the limestone bricks.

I'm leaning towards the Western Red Cedar BUT how can I name my blog Jarrah Jungle as a nod to my love of the jarrah wood through out my house and then not choose this Jarrah sample?

See my dilemma readers! 

So decision time - will we pick Jarrah or Western Red Cedar?

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[All images my own]