The simple and efficient way. It means the way we built this one together one morning. Later in the week this stay at home mom built the second gate a morning while keeping an eye on three boys four and under. You won’t find fancy tools, pocket holes or matching screws in this simple tutorial. Although you might find just the right amount to help to make this happen for you.
SUPPLIES
Chicken Wire
Staples (hammer or stapler)
Screws
Impact Drill & Driver
Wood (2 – 2’x4′)
Hand Saw (Skill Saw)
Table Saw
BASIC INstructions
The 2’x4′ boards were 8′ long and cut down the middle on the table saw to create a less heavy gate.
There are now four boards. These four boards, plus one scrap piece of wood, ended up getting 2 gates done for us. You can see the honest planning notes below, even some misspelled words.
cut boards
First board (A) cut in half at 4′ for the two sides.
Second (B) and third (C) board had 27″ cut off the end. This left two board of 53″ length for the X in the middle, plus 16″ on each end for the next gate. Now you might need a different width of gate, so what you will do is measure the opening, minus 3″ for the outside board (A) and use that number as the length for the top and bottom boards. The wider the gate, the longer the X pieces in the middle will be – so that is a consideration when you decide how many boards you will need. You can determine this all ahead of time or just get an extra 2’x4′
simple gate build
Once these were cut, I used a driver to run the drill bit, then the impact to put in screws on the angle. It works so much better. You can see how I made sure I wouldn’t be hitting other screws by the drawings below.
I measured then diagonal length to make sure they were even, then marked out the angles with a pencil. After the marks, used a skill saw to make the angled cuts. After a few adjustments – everything fit just fine. Screwed it all together with 2.5″ hex head screws. These worked great for us, but if you have something different laying around – try that first.
We added the chicken wire to the fence with hammer in staples. If you have a stapler or staple hammer that would be much faster.
That’s it
Attaching the gate
We attached this wooden gate to our t-posts, you can read about that here.
Although this is simple, we hope it will give someone the courage to just get started now. For too many days we have waited for the perfect weather, the perfect supplies, the perfect schedule. No more. Let’s get headed for better.
