Courtyard Progress - AliTimber Fence Slats + Gate

Finishing the courtyard fence around the front of the house has been on our to do list forever and I'm so happy to finally have some updates to share as the last few weekends we've been working on it.

Let me take you back to when the limestone courtyard was built over 2 years ago now .....

The courtyard was approved by Council in March 2013 and then it was built in October 2013.

Once the limestone pillars were built we then debated on whether to use wood or metal fence slats between the pillars. 

We worked out the pros and cons of both and wood was going to be about the same price and would need ongoing maintenance. Whereas metal would need no maintenance, it is stronger, and easier to install, so in the end we couldn't resist the metal option.

When I say metal I mean aluminium which is powder coated in a wood grain look finish. It also comes with a 10 year warranty, what's not to love about that!

We got samples from metal fence companies around Perth to try to get a colour match for our jarrah garage door. 

This is where we came to a grinding halt because we couldn't find the right colour - there were various shades of jarrah but none that matched the garage door. 

So we put this project on hold and went on to renovate our kitchen, dining room, laundry and powder room.

Once we got approval to subdivide our block late last year, we knew we had to get a move on and finish the front courtyard and add some kerb appeal to the house. 

So we resumed our search for the right coloured jarrah fence slat again.

We found a pretty close match from Awards Fencing who stock AliTimber and decided to just go for it, especially when we managed to save almost $1000 to what we were quoted the previous year! 

We ordered a slatted gate which they made to size, as well as the gate posts, end caps, hinges and handle.

The fence slats are a DIY install so we had to work out how many lengths of fence panels we'd need for the courtyard, as well as channel extrusions and end caps.

The fence slats come in 5.8 metre long lengths and 3 different thicknesses - thin, medium and large - we went for the medium size which is 65 x 15.

The gate and metal slats were delivered within days and they were packaged and wrapped really well to protect them from marks and scratches. I was so impressed with the packaging, there was even plastic wrapped between each slat, so there was no way they would scratch.

The reason for the packaging is the slats scratch quite easily and we had to be very careful with nails and anything metal as we were installing them, we made a few marks on them but heard a tip you can hide the scratches with shoe polish so we'll give that a go!

The packaging made cutting the fence slats a lot easier too as we kept them wrapped and cut 5 at once which saved us a heap of time!

First of all we hung the gate, as this was already made to size it only took a couple of hours to fix the gate posts to the brick, install the hinges and hang the gate. 

As you can see Lexi is getting excited about having a whole new playground to hang out in!

Because we rendered the bricks of the house we didn't think one gate post would screw into the brick very deep due to the render/plaster on top, so to be safe we attached two gate posts together for extra strength and depth. 

We screwed the double fence post into the brick wall, attached the hinges to the gate, and then hung the gate from the posts. 

It already feels more secure and private with the gate on which is what we wanted. 

I want to put a door buzzer on the gate so we can lock it and anyone that wants to come in will have to buzz us to be let in! 

So that's about all for today's blog post, as this one is already very long (well done if you've made it all the way to the bottom here!)

Next I'll share the install of the fence slats to the courtyard. We are still finishing this after working on it over the long weekend we hope to finish it off this weekend.

What do you think of the AliTimber - can you believe it's not real jarrah?

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[All images my own]