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A house "Entrance" renovated to create space between guests entering and our Rottweilers.
SCENARIO
So we have two Rottweilers with a serious case of FOMO, and we're not the type of owners to leave them outside when we aren't home, the unfortunate downside to this is Luna tends to go a little nuts on our old front door and wall, leaving massive scratch marks on both. We decided to renovate the entire front entrance section to prevent them from getting to the door while we are out, while also creating a safe area for visitors to enter the house without being trampled by the dogs.
Step 1: The first Barrier, new door, new lock
First thing we did was purchase a retractable barrier that we thought would be useful, this went up before we purchased and installed a new door and new smart lock.
PROBLEM
We thought this would be the whole project, but we quickly discovered the retractable gates to be useless to a fast moving dog, even if installed into studs. The first parent dinner we had since installing this barrier, my mums frenchie decided to just cannonball its way through, after reinstalling it, my rottweilers figured out that the gate was stretchy, so they just went under it... I could not let them ruin my new front door.
SOLUTION
A custom built gate. I went to Bunnings and purchased some pine to create the frame. I ensured it was wide enough to easily fit the space, could swing, didn't bend, could support weight on it and was high enough that our robot vac could go under it when it was doing its thing.
I installed it using some cheap hinges and a simple slide bolt, with a stopper at the bottom of the gate so that it wouldn't go inwards (something discovered through the inlaws trying to do this...). The gate worked wonders, until one of our dogs discovered they could just jump through the viewing section. So we had to figure out a new solution, which ended up being some shelves.
Using some left over pine and some simple brackets, we cut these to fit the wall section. Since we had to move the key rack we had, I used some small hooks under each plank for our various keys. This has eliminated our dogs ability to jump through, so now we have an (almost) dog free space most of the day.
I'm not sure who has more ingenuity @Remarka6le. Is it you or the dogs? I give them credit, though; accessing the area through the viewing section had me in stitches!
I can whole-heartedly sympathize with your situation. When I was a new renter many years ago, I had a dog that would manage to just about chew through a solid-core front door in the nine hours I was a work. Whenever she'd chew through it, I would diligently bog it back up and repaint it. It got to the stage where she wasn't ripping timber out anymore, just pink Builder's bog. I'm reasonably sure the bottom half of that door was entirely filler. To make matters worse, the door was not flat but inlaid. On the bright side, I'm now very skilled at patching damaged timber with filler and can just about recreate any intricate surface. That was just one of the many items destroyed due to separation anxiety. All the work was well worth it, though; she was the best dog I ever had.
I love that you've gone to the effort of chaffering the timber edges on your slats and shelf brackets, and the design you've come up with looks like it will stand the test of time, hopefully.
Please keep us updated as something tells me there could be more comical dog-related scenarios in the future.
Great work!
Mitchell
We have an interior camera pointed at the area, if this community had the ability to post videos directly to here and not to youtube, I'd post it in a heart beat lol
It's a decent jump as well and required a lot of finesse on their part. The wall, edging and door were absolutly destroyed and any attempt to repair them was wrecked within a couple of weeks, Luna's seperation anxiety is a lot but she's a rescue so it's to be expected. We've certainly put in a lot of effort to keep them out, for their safety and my doors lol
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