Garden Arches and Rose Arbours - China vs Australia

In the previous post I mentioned 'The Wedding', the one major event which was taking up every waking hour, not only with typical wedding preparations but also the mad haste to "fix and clean up" the property for the pending celebrations. Now, Murphy's Law or should I say curse, has a way of embracing this property at the most inopportune times.  One such event was when the rose arch that my prized Pierre de Ronsard was trained against had finally given up the ghost.  Our 'cheap and cheerful' China-made arch which I brought up here 7 years ago from the city, being typically made from cheap thin walled tubing, finally rusted through ... completely.  I was devastated to find my beloved Pierre on the ground. 

Despite making and selling garden arches I've been without one myself for quite some time, so here was the prime opportunity to get a sturdy, strong and more appropriate garden arch made up. The climbing rose was positioned right where the tea and coffee was to be served after 'The Ceremony', so no excuses, making a rose arbor was one job that was not going to be filed into the invisible list of 'to do's' which Andrew kept in his head. This was a project that needed to be done and finished. Unfortunately we didn't have time to powder coat it, but it did get a lick of black paint with some gold rubbed over the flower motifs. 

It's a prime example of wrought iron made to fit.  One side of the garden arch fits the purpose of supporting my Pierre de Ronsard and the other side, with its decorative wrought iron work is ornamental with beautiful scrolls and hot stamped steel flowers. Being narrower in depth it doesn't block the path either.  This is one arch which is not going to rust away and should last a couple of decades at least.

Wrought iron pool fence

It's amazing how much gets done when the pressure's on!  The night before Andrew went in for a hip replacement our daughter announced that she wanted to get married, the bombshell dropped when we found out she was giving us only 9 months notice - they wanted an autumn wedding.  Miss Independent was only 19, so our reaction after the initial shock, was "how the heck are we paying for this?", followed by "Oh, you want it here at home ... looks like we're going to have to do a major tidy up". Now, we live on 75 acres, work from the property and have been here 6 years. The property was run down to start with and there was still alot to fix up.  But most importantly the swimming pool didn't have a child proof pool fence - or more practically from our personal perspective a barrier to stop the wildlife and curious calves testing the solar pool blanket - but that's another story. 

I've never particularly liked standard tube pool fencing, and I figured that it was my turn to have Andrew make me something really lovely from wrought iron.  I'm glad my man likes a challenge, he on the other hand was far more practical ... "you want it, you give me a drawing and I'll make it".  The challenge was on!  After a couple of knockbacks from the 'welder extraordinaire', along the line of "that won't work", or "have you any idea how much that's going to cost?", a compromise was reached. [Sidenote: it's not only our customers that have to work with mercenary husbands]. 

 The pool fence is made, each panel from solid steel and wrought iron so it's quite heavy, and it came up beautifully.  It would have been nice to have had more wrought iron in the design, but unfortunately South Australian swimming pool regulations are such that there must be a minimum 1.2m clearance from top to bottom between where a child can get a foot hold.  I think the gold caps, which incidentally started out as a joke really set it off.

On a final note, I really enjoy watching Andrew beam with pride when people admire his wrought iron pool fence.