Hired a company last summer to do gates for our new house. We reached out to a couple companies and they were the only one to come give us a quote so we went with him. Turns out he has no business building gates! Only one gate had a latch, the double gate for the driveway had no provisions at all for any type of latch. I took care of the double gates in the fall, still need to level them so they close properly and look right.
So for what I did in my garage today, I rebuilt the only gate he had a latch on after our nasty windstorm last night. Who knew a single tech screw wasn't going to be good enough?
Where we started...
The twisted stripped mess of a latch...
Now it's centered in the opening with grease-able barrel hinges, stops to keep it from opening with the wind and a proper latch. Wish I took a before picture, it was offset to one side with a massive gap on the other. The guy was a horrible fabricator. I should have done them myself but didn't have the time and wasn't wired for my welder yet.
For giggles, here are the front gates, I have already reworked the walk through and will get the doubles cleaned up this spring. Like what he left for holding the gates? Cotton rope, I put the leftover bucket of stucco there. The gate on the right is nearly half an inch taller in the center of the panel than it is where it meets the other side. I would have called him out on it but if he was comfortable walking away and calling this done the fix would be no better.
He made the gate too narrow, when I installed the latch the bolt just grazed the bar it was supposed to latch in. As an added bonus, the hole it was supposed to engage wasn't in line with the latch.