The process of fitting the dog gates did not go completely according to plan. I’ve already told you that initially my Mistress bought the wrong ones. Well, the right ones are just as lovely as the others and come with a template for the holes that you have to drill. As far as they can tell, my Mistress and Master followed the instructions perfectly and used the template exactly as shown. The first door was hung proudly on its hinges and then they tried to close it only to find that the catch was nowhere near the recess it was supposed to slot into. Basically the template for drilling was completely wrong. My Master moved the recess for the catch to the right height, closed the gate and stood back proudly to admire his handy work. Then they tried to close the kitchen door, only to find that the door handle came to the same place as the catch of the gate and therefore wouldn’t close. At that point they were close to giving up, but I urged them on. And all the hinges were moved. The door now works beautifully but the door frame looks as though we’ve had a woodworm problem. At some point my Mistress will go round it with filler and paint and spoil the new look.
The second gate went a lot better as they ignored the template. It would have been excellent if the doorframe had been square, but it turned out that using the edge of the door frame to position the hinges meant that one of the clips doesn’t meet its recess, again through no fault of their own.
The final gate has been fitted perfectly, It looks good and works perfectly. I think by this stage they had learnt from all the lessons of the things that could go wrong and had become proficient. Now we dogs just have to be prepared to find we can’t go to all the parts of the house we could go to before. At this point I really do wonder why I encouraged them to carry on when the first one went wrong. I should have been in there agreeing that DIY was pointless and they shouldn’t bother.
Alfie Dog with a little help from Rosemary J Kind alfie@alfiedog.me.uk