Latest from the Blog

A great first impression starts at the entrance to your property. The right gates improve the look of a home and add peace of mind. The wrong gates, rusting or rotting away, take away from the look of an otherwise nice home. For these reasons, metal gates are a popular choice when homeowners want to…

For independent retailers, the entrance is the first sales pitch. Potential customers notice the frontage before they see the menu, price tags or window displays. The design of a shop front canopy can make that all-important first impression. A well-designed canopy can also provide a professional appearance and solve problems related to fading stock due…

Leaving garden structures alone and not prepping until spring is a common practice for many people. In many cases, there isn’t a lot of harm that comes from this. However, winter damage comes from the slow and cumulative nature of the season. Over winter the structures will get moisture collecting in the joints, hairline cracks…

Metal railings are often ignored during the planning phase of a project in favor of gates. This is reasonable as gates are the part that gets used most and perhaps deserve more attention. However, railings to the side of the gate are an afterthought and are specified, if at all, as a last minute requirement.…

The practical distinctions between different types of awnings is important to understand when making a purchasing decision. This is especially the case with cassettes vs. open-roll awnings since in many ways the choice made will shape the consumer’s experience with the awning for its entire lifespan. Because of the decision’s permanency, open-roll awnings should be…

How we approach the boundary of our property lines has completely transformed over the years with contemporary design thinking. Gone are the days of selecting and installing mass produced gates and never thinking about it again. We are now more highly involved in the design process. Here’s the latest thinking on the subject.   Modern…

The answer you will get from most manufacturers is twenty-five years, sometimes more. That figure is not dishonest, but it describes performance under fairly specific conditions that do not always match what a fence actually faces once it is installed. Understanding what drives longevity — and what shortens it — is more useful than treating…

Heat treatment of timber is an age-old technique we see in some tricks of Scandinavian construction. More recently in the past decades, this technique has taken the UK/Central Europe by storm. Because of its prevalence, garden designers, decking installers and manufacturers have jumped on the bandwagon. Sometimes, this enthusiasm is warranted, and other times it…

Manufacturers typically provide a 25-plus year lifespan estimate. While such claims are not completely falsified, they only reflect optimism under specific, rare conditions. There are plenty of external conditions beyond the manufacturers’ control that negatively impact a fence. For the consumer’s benefit, time estimates on lifespan are not guarantees. It’s more useful to assess fence…

If you’ve ever wondered why tongue and groove cladding is still being used in everything from garden rooms to commercial fit-outs, the reason is simple: it works! And it works subtly. Tongue and groove is cleverly designed to work with the way wood naturally wants to expand and contract. It does this by allowing one…