A Welcoming Entrance

I'm happy to report that the pretty entrance to the venue, Pimperl Place, is being built!  It looks like a small project, but in reality, it takes a lot of coordination between contractors and time to actually make it happen.  Just to refresh your memory...here's a picture of what I wanted the gate to look like.  I used a picture of a gate that I found online to get the basic shape and then I overlaid that picture with my Down in the Delta logo, minus the words.  This is very similar to what we will actually have.

The first contractor would be the concrete man, followed by the stone mason.  In our case, I luckily found one man who does both, which is unusual!  That saved us a little time and headache, plus he turned out to be really good at both.  If you live in Baldwin or Mobile County and need concrete or stone work, Kenneth Gaines is the man to call.

What slowed the project start was the rain.  We've had so much rain over the last couple of months, that it threw Kenney behind on his jobs that were scheduled before ours.  The rain finally let up a week or so ago and he got caught up, so he was ready to work our job.

Up above, you can see how we took the palette of stone apart so that we could lay it out to easily see the shapes of each piece.  My husband put them out on a long goose-neck trailer. Kenny and his son are hard at work in the next picture.

This picture was taken from the driver's seat of my car as I came into the driveway. You can see the existing old gate in front of my car, and the two newly finished columns set back from that.  We are going to reposition the road a bit, which is why it looks off center with the columns.  Also,  you are probably wondering why the new gate is so far back from the old one.  We own the property all the way up to the existing gate, but the power company has an easement that extends twenty-five feet back, so we just decided to move the location of the entrance back to that line so that they don't have to come and get us every time they want to come down the easement to trim trees.  

This weekend, hubby and I will be ditch-digging and running the electrical service needed to operate the gate, lights, etc.  Then the gate contractor is supposed to come out on Tuesday to get "field measurements" so that the gate is built to fit perfectly.  While that's going on, the tree removal experts will show up to take out some trees that are on the new fence line. Hubby normally cuts down our trees, but these are so close to the power lines out on the highway that we decided it would be better to hire someone who has a bucket truck to do it. Once the trees are down, the fence contractor can then come in and put up the fence that will run parallel to the highway.  

It seems like we've been waiting months to get this project started, so you can only imagine how happy I am to see it finally coming together.  

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