WE HAVE A NEW GATE

 With a new driveway under construction now, we figured it was a good time to a new gate.  Nothing fancy, but we needed a new one.  And by "we", it's for both 2nd Family and us since we share the front part of the driveway.

This is the old one.

It had settled and began scraping the ground becoming more and more difficult to close.  In fact, recently, "J" has just been leaving it open all the time because she said it was so hard to deal with.  For her security, and of course ours and the new construction, we thought it best to get the gate fixed so it can be closed again. 

We found a great company to come see if they could lift it on the pole and remount it by a foot, so that it could swig closed.  But, as with many older things on a rural property, it was rusted and if we started closing it nightly and the builders are opening it daily, it wouldn't last very much longer.

So, we ordered a new one and they installed it for us.

And here it is!

We didn't opt for anything fancy.  At this point, the driveway gate is just to keep out cars and discourage people from being where they shouldn't be.  Plus, when we have construction materials, etc on site, we sure don't want anyone to just be able to drive down the driveway when they aren't supposed to be there.

We also got a new chain and lock, to be set up in something called a "daisy chain padlock".

The builder will put their own lock attached to ours so they can open and close as needed (they don't want a key to our lock) and then we can open and close as needed as well.  The picture above is an example of how that works.  We can lock them together and it stays locked. They can go anytime and unlock theirs, go in and out and lock it back when they are done and we can do the same as we (or "J") need to do. 

Pretty cool solution!

Once we move in, we might look at something more substantial or even an automatic gate of some sort...for those rainy days when you have to get out of the car and unlock the chain, ha!  But for now, this will work just fine, "J" is thrilled and we are happy.