Building a garden gate

We had dogs escaping from our house because we couldn't keep doors shut. I decided we needed to add a gate to the porch outside the house so that even if the front door opened, the dogs wouldn't run into the yard, or worse, to the beach.

I built a frame for the gate with the diagonal starting from the bottom on the hinge side. I used mending plates to join the boards together. I used an online calculator to determine the spacing for my 2 1/2 inch boards.

My boys helped me through the boards to the gate frame. I cut the boards long on top so I would have run to cut a curve off the top. I used a narrow strip of wood to create a curve that I traced with a pencil and cut with the Skil saw.