Another home repair

Yesterday at work I received a call from my neighbor saying my dogs had opened the gate and escaped. Russ lured them back into the yard with dog treats but they’d figured out how to open the latch and they escaped again, (they’re smart and persistent). He corralled them back inside the yard but this time twined the gate shut. I was intensely thankful, envisioning them hurt, lost, or stolen and sold to the dog factory. Gulp.

The ground had shifted since the fence was installed, pulling the gate post out of plumb and leaving a gap on the latch just the right size to be dog-nosed open. I’d fleetingly considered how to fix the gap, and discarded the “best” method of actually resetting the post as too labor intensive. I figured there must be an extender that would pull the latch up snug against the fence post – so I was off to the hardware on a quest.

In these situations I gravitate toward the seasoned (okay, older) clerks as their experience results in a higher level of knowledge and creative ideas waiting to be tapped. In the fencing department I quizzed two young clerks on possible solutions. Zip, zero, nada. Sigh. I methodically made my way through the racks and bins of galvanized fence hardware until, eureka, there was a latch mechanism and extender that seemed like the ticket. Sometimes I think I should work at a hardware store.

It was a seemingly straight forward repair. Yes, seemingly. I cannibalized the extender from my recent purchase and bolted together the old and new. The length was exactly right. But now the latch didn’t fit over the post, it was too small. What? Metal doesn’t shrink.

Took it all apart and put the latch into a vise-grip and pried that baby apart with a large pipe wrench. Put it all back together and voila, a perfect fit. Problem solved.

I loosed the dogs and the first thing they did was run to the gate… Hah!