Fence and Gate Design

The old worn out fence and gate. What to do? How about taking an photo of the gate and fence, and loading the image into Inkscape (or your favorite graphics program) and seeing what kind of design ideas we can come up with? Since our old pickets had worn too far to reuse we took them off of the underlying structure. That underlying structure is what we took a photo of, to start the design process.

Design It is fun to try it all on paper or pixel...

We took an image and included a tape measure so we could get the correct scale on our drawings and sketches. In our drawings we considered stained cedar (brown), old weathered gray cedar (gray/brown) and painted wood (gray), as possible parts of our design palette. From there we tried different designs of interest. We were also planning on replacing the old planter box with a more modern, non toxic version to grow food and herbs in. The old box is made of pressure treated lumber with is usually treated with Arsenic, Copper and other toxic waste products.

One idea was to have a beautiful mix of old and new vertical and horizontal pickets on the fence and gate.

Should all this this vertical and horizontal fun be cedar, or should we add to the mix a bit with painted pickets?

Beauty The beauty of the lake dominates, leaving the hand rail as an invitation.

What ended up winning out was to have much much less, and to expose the beauty of the lake. We cut down the fence and trimmed the hand rail. We reused some cedar and figured we would let the cedar age and blend in rather than stand out. We encased the treated rail post using older weathered cedar to hide the look of the treated lumber. In a future project we will replace the hand rail. Next up is to replace the planter box which is another opportunity to have fun with design.

"It was a struggle between bold modern horizontal elements, and minimalist less is more. Less is more won out this time. The view mattered more than than the design statement."

Design Process:

1Take an image of the project with a tape measure or something for scale.

2Open the image in your favorite graphics program and create a number of options.

3Choose your favorite design of the options you created.