The Importance of Quality Installation
Where does your money go for an installation?
There are two kinds of door installation: The Butt Hinge and the Barn Door.
The Butt Hinge is the quality door installation that you see in the doors of your home. This type of door installation is done by a door hanging specialist/professional or a finish carpenter. (And anyone who has ever tried to DIY this project will tell you: It’s NOT easy.)
Typically, the installation requires recessing the hinge flush into the door edge and includes a typical door knob that that has the latch portion precisely flush-set into the door edge as well. This is a lengthy process that requires precision in gap tolerances.
All Bless Construction gates are installed with Butt Hinges, unless otherwise requested.
The other kind of door installation—the economy option—is the Barn Door.
The “Barn Door” type of hinge is commonly found on an economy line of gates. It is a surface mounted hinge that is screwed to one of the outside faces of the gate. This type of hinge lends itself to a much quicker installation. The gate can easily be positioned from right to left or even up or down before the gate is secured into its final position. It does not require the timely calculations of the standard door hanging process.
The type of hardware that is normally used with the Barn Door Hinge is a simple metal handle that has a thumb latch to open the gate, or a common gate latch that has a string coming through a small hole in the gate in which you can pull this string to open the gate. Although the Barn Door Hinge and typical gate latch hardware are not as streamlined nor as sleek as typical door hardware, they are, however, a nice alternative for those who don’t mind the look and wish to save the installers time, which in turn, “should” save your money.
ECONOMY OR HIGH QUALITY
Although a soft and light weight gate is often acceptable for many people’s needs, many other’s prefer a higher quality, more elegant, and durable wood product that will be more resistant to dents, as well as the abuse, from accidents of children, movers, gardeners etc. Unless otherwise specified we normally use Philippine Mahogany to build our “High Quality Gates” in a process which eliminates the need for visible Bolts, Brackets, and mending hardware which is often used to help hold together a soft wood product such as a Redwood or Cedar Gate. Just as you will rarely ever find the doors of a house made of Cedar or Redwood, we prefer to use a much higher quality wood for our gates as well. We take pride in standing behind our values of delivering quality by the means of using very weather resistant woods including our most cost effective, Philippine Mahogany wood as opposed to the softer/cheaper Cedar or Redwoods. We use Philippine Mahogany wood for some of the same reasons that major door manufacturers use Mahogany. Some our reasons are as follows:
• The stability of Mahogany
•The lack of “Sapwood” in Mahogany
•The great weather resistance of Mahogany
•The hardness of Mahogany.
When selecting Mahogany boards to be used for a gate, we look at each board for certain wood grain patterns to use, as well as wood grain patterns to stay away from. A particular board that appears to be nice and straight one day may warp or twist in the future after your gate has been installed. This can become quite a headache as door locks may not work properly. This can be due to not knowing and /or selecting a poor wood grain pattern. This process is more involved than just running to the store and picking up Mahogany Boards (or any boards of wood) and expecting to build a gate that will not warp in the future. Our experience, as well as our specializing in many different types of woods, gives us the confidence in knowing that we can build a straight Door/Gate for you today, and have it remain straight for you in the future. Test for your self the next time you are at a Lumber store, you will easily sink your fingernail into a piece of Cedar, but can not do the same with the Mahogany”s, and as Cedar is weather proof like styrofoam, it is also leans close to the characteristics of styrofoam in the sense of how poorly styrofoam grips a screw as well as the Cedar”s ease of breaking. Whether you are interested in having a showpiece for your home, or simply trying to avoid a gamble for dependability and future headaches. Purchase our High Quality Gates and service!