It occurs to me that I never followed up on the porch project I mentioned here back in August. If you don't remember the details, I really was just noting how much we love sitting on our front porch and that it would be really nice if the opening that leads from the yard up to the porch had some sort of gate so we could keep Gus, and one day The Captain, outside with us without worrying that they would run off or fall off the porch. I even drew up some fancy schematics depicting exactly what I had in mind.

After soliciting a few people for advice, I finally got up the nerve to hit up the hardware store and pick up the necessary supplies: Two giant 2x4s, eight dowel rods, a couple packages of heavy duty hinges, a 1" drill bit, and the longest wood screws I could find. Because I was really only dealing with eight pieces of wood, I just had the fine folks at Lowes cut it for me at the appropriate length. After lots of careful measuring, re-measuring, marking, and measuring again, I finally got the gate assembled without any mishaps or injuries.

I did discover one thing I hadn't thought too much about, however: These gates are heavy. I didn't want to put too much stress on the existing porch railings, so I decided to get a couple of castor wheels to put on the bottom of each gate to give them a little extra support. I did have to enlist the help of my infintely-more-handy-than-me father-in-law, Rex, to get the gate mounted so it didn't look lopsided, but all told it was a pretty painless and straight forward project.

I was pretty pleased with myself, but the victory was short lived; On Gus' first evenings on the porch with us, he proceeded to jump over the gate like it was nothing. And that's why we don't allow him to even put his paws up on the gate anymore.