This Gate Looks Simple… It’s Not

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:01]Hey, what's up, guys? I'm Joe and this is a Bradford Gate.

[00:00:16]All right, so come check out this uh this cedar gate we made. So, this is a custom gate that we made in our shop.

[00:00:23]Now, it was a little bit of a unique request and I didn't really know what we were getting into when uh when we said yes to it technically, but uh the customer here, they had two uh inspiration pictures that uh that had a arch style wooden gate uh that was set in some brick columns. And so we talked through with them on the design aspects of what they liked about those two pictures. They were very similar. Um and uh so we kind of got those details. We worked through that. And then the the other thing is they had this antique hardware that both this handle and this door knocker. And so they asked us if we could uh could incorporate that into this gate. Uh, and then at that point, this was all just in our heads and we're like, "Oh, sure. Yeah, let's let's take a stab at that. See what we can do." Uh, so this is what we ended up with. This is an all western red cedar gate. So, one of the pictures was kind of a rough finish, kind of like this cedar, cuz this cedar has a little bit of texture and a little bit of roughness. It's not planed as smooth as like if you were to picture like a a 2x4 that like a stud or a treated 2x4. They plane it really smooth, but this cedar has some roughness um which gives it gives it a neat look. So we um we took those pictures. We took the dimensions of this. They already had these this brick and these these columns up. This uh this goes into like a mechanical area where they've got their AC, pool equipment, backup generator, power, all that. Uh so they've got the masonry brick to uh block off and and house all of that, but they wanted a unique, you know, entry point here, something that complemented the brick and but hid the uh the mechanical units that are behind there.

[00:02:30]So, we uh we started working. We took uh took those pictures. We we sketched some stuff up. We took measurements of this uh this opening. And then we uh we kind of did some some um just some trial and error and thinking through, okay, well, this opening, how big do we need it? How big of a profile do we want to do for the uh the gate frame? So, this is actually uh right at 6 in uh on these on both the arch and these uprights and the bottom up AC brace across the bottom.

[00:03:08]So, we we started with 2x8s just to so we had enough just in case they needed to be wider, but ended up here with a 6-in frame and then we did a 1x6 uh picket here with a beveled edge uh to give it that kind of tongue and groove type uh type look, give a little bit of depth there uh so it's not just a a flat board buted up against each other. And then uh similar to the picture, now we already had this handle, but similar to one of the inspiration pictures, they had these decorative strap hinges. So I uh I did some research and was able to find these uh these strap hinges that match almost exactly like one of those gate pictures. And um they came with so this is a pin pin hinge uh style or what we would call a pin hinge because this this strap hinge on both the top and the bottom has an opening or a female side and then there's this plate with the the pin or the male side and then that just sits that all integrates and sits on top of there and then allows you to be able to have a pivot point and swing that swing that gate.

[00:04:31]That also works well too because we had this flat um I say flat somewhat rough, but this surface of the brick that we're having to flat mount or attach to the side of it. So, we took LDT anchors and we painted the heads black to match this to uh to be able to anchor this to the to the brick and give us the strength that we needed to to hang something like this. Now, we tried our best um to try to come up with a way. Now, this this thumb latch does operate, but we didn't have the hardware that was with this was just this handle and this knob. Uh it didn't have the interior inner workings of an actual latch here. So, we tried to think through if there's a way to actually make that functional, but they're just we came up short on that.

[00:05:23]So, this has got a a standard latch on it so that you can open it from either the the front or the back. And then again, since this was a a flat surface here, we had to fabricate this to where we could attach this plate to the uh to the brick and then have this pin that would actually allow this to to latch up against.

[00:05:50]And the last thing we chose to do is we didn't feel like just putting screws or lag screws into those hinges would be enough support. So even though you can see these from the backside and that may or may not be preferable just for the aesthetics of it, but we wanted to be plenty secure. So, we just we chose to bolt all the way through this gate um with our hinge point. So, that that's not going to allow any screws or anything that could back out or loosen.

[00:06:24]It's all bolted together, sandwiched together, um and going to hold this gate for a long time to come. Hey, thanks for checking out this gate with us today. I hope that was helpful. Make sure and like this video. It helps out a ton. And subscribe to the channel for more gates just like this.

[00:06:41]YEAH.

[00:06:46]HEAT.