Missing side

Whilst I was painting the door, Brian decided he would start on the side gate. It was the last of our good sunny days, and I was very concious he might not get as far with it as he hoped, and would have to leave it in an even less stable condition than he started. However it really was in quite a bad state, and he felt he needed to do something before winter set in.

He started by wire brushing off all the old flaky paint. There was a lot of it!

Once he had done this he could start to see the size of the problem. There were some pretty big gaps and some missing pieces of wood that would need replacing, and it all needed treating before anything else could happen. My worries that it would need too much work might have been justified.