Fence Gates
in Yorktown
& Across the Virginia Peninsula

Custom-built wood gates, plus walk-through, driveway, and pool gates in wood, aluminum, and chain link. Built and braced not to sag. Virginia Class A licensed, bonded & insured.

Why Gates Take a Beating Here

A gate leads a harder life than the rest of the fence, and the Peninsula's climate makes it harder still.

Every gate fights gravity, because it hangs off one side and gets swung, leaned on, and sometimes hung on by kids hundreds of times a season. Add coastal humidity, which swells and shrinks wood and loosens nailed joints, and salt air, which corrodes cheap hinges and latches, and you have the recipe for the sagging, dragging gate that so many homeowners just learn to live with. None of that is inevitable. A gate built with a properly set post, screwed and diagonally braced framing, and corrosion-resistant hardware handles the abuse and the weather and keeps swinging true, which is exactly how we build ours and why we can guarantee them operational for a year.

Why Gates Sag, and How We Build One That Does Not

Almost every gate problem is the same problem: the gate has lost its battle with gravity. Understanding how that happens is how you buy a gate that does not.

A gate hangs off two hinges on one post and reaches out several feet to the latch side, which means gravity is constantly trying to rotate it downward, dropping the latch corner toward the ground. Four things decide whether the gate wins that fight or loses it. The first is the gate post: it carries the entire weight of the gate every single swing, so it has to be heavier and set deeper than a normal line post, and a gate hung on an undersized or shallow post will lean and drop no matter how well the gate itself is built. The second is bracing: a gate frame needs a diagonal brace running from the bottom hinge corner up to the top latch corner to triangulate the frame and carry the load back to the hinges, and a gate built as a plain rectangle will rack into a parallelogram within a season or two. The third is fasteners: we screw our gate frames rather than nailing them, because nails work loose under the constant motion and the coastal humidity, while screws hold the joints tight. The fourth is the hardware: quality, corrosion-resistant hinges rated for the gate's weight, so the hinges do not sag or seize.

Build a gate with a proper post, a real diagonal brace, screwed joints, and good hardware, and it keeps swinging true for years. Skip any one of them to save time or money, and you get the sagging, dragging gate that is the single most common fence complaint we hear. That is why we build every gate the same way, and why we can guarantee ours operational for a year.