Wrought Iron Garden Gazebo - for the wedding ...

Well the dust has settled.  Our daughter's wedding is over and I must admit it took a couple of weeks where we didn't really know what to do with ourselves. Months had been spent organising things, but the highlight was being able to design something unique for the day ... the wedding gazebo for the garden ceremony. 

It's been made up from separate panels and is very heavy with all the solid steel in it. We ran out of time and didn't get it powder coated, however we all decided that the olde world rusty finish worked well. 

Once it rusted up we sealed it with Penetrol. This is an oil product that dries like a varnish. It penetrates right into the steel so that it won't rust any further. It's given the gazebo a lovely natural brown finish and I'd strongly recommend this product to any of our customers who want a 'rusty' gate, garden arch or ornament.

We initially toyed with the idea of hiring the gazebo out for weddings but now that the wedding's over maybe I'll find a more permanent place for it ... just for me!

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.