Bill built two of these doors for our original garden after the store bought ones fell apart. They are heavy duty and are holding up really well.
Once we decided that we needed a door from the driveway into the new garden area we knew that Bill needed to make more of these doors. They were fairly quick to make, were not too expensive and have been holding up really well. Time is what we were lacking. Even though the fencing around the other side of the original garden is done we had kept the doors. the plan is to remove the one fence wall completely now that the fence has been extended. We just haven’t done that yet. Maybe it’s nostalgia and maybe it’s that we don’t trust the chickens or cats whatever the reason we have been slow to take down that fence. The door on that side has not been closed in a year and it can get in the way of getting the wagon in there when we need to move dirt. Which is why that door finally came down and we are using it as our entrance into the new garden area. To make it easier we decided to install it on the wood deck post on the garden side of the lean to. 
Bill added spacing blocks between the door and the deck post on the hinge side.
The latch side took a little more thinking. This is the side where the metal t-post is and mounting that hardware was a head scratcher. The solution is to mount a 2×4 to that post but that also had a challenge. Those t-posts don’t have a flat surface to cleanly mount a board to. See those little green bumps?
The solution was to route a groove into the board deep enough for the bumps so that the post can sit flush with the boards back. Now for the next problem and that is how can you open that latch from the outside? The answer is string. Drill a hole through the board and run a string through that. Tie the end of the string into the hole there on the latch head. When you pull the string it raises the latch head
In case you were wondering the gap is the perfect size for a small shop cat to be able to get into and out of the new garden area.
Having wood on both sides of the door also allowed a top header to be attached to span the opening and keep everything squared up. Because we ran fence on both sides of the door it would have been easy for something to get pulled out of square making the door sage or hard to open/close. By framing it out before the fencing was run we were able to stop that from happening. Since there is that gap between the hinge side and the deck and since the fencing does not go all the way up from the bottom of the deck to the roof there are places where critters can get in or out as the case may be. However, no matter how secure this is animals will find a way even when we were running electric wire on the outside they got in. Animals are smart and when they want something they will get it. The fencing serves as a deterrent or at least to slow them down. It does keep deer out and it does keep dogs out as long as they are bigger than a cat. It also keeps “not our dog” in as long as the cats don’t show Tas how to get in and out. Which Smokey and Diana have done. Nothing will get your heart pumping like looking up and seeing your son’s husky bounding through the woods on the outside of the fence. Only this time the boy he always comes to is at Boot Camp in CA! There is also nothing like being out in the garden and all of a sudden you are face to face with a Rottweiler that you don’t know who is attempting to gain access to the chicken run. He was people friendly and did not get in the run but that was the day we put the door on the fenced area we had just expanded. It was also the last day that the chickens ever had full access to the property. The other neighbors’ two dogs were not as people friendly and thought that this land was their land and were willing to throw down and fight for it and chicken is tasty. The doors are as much for keeping things in as they are for keeping things out. We also left the door from the original garden into the newly expanded area up. It allows me to let the chickens run and still let Tas come into the garden with me and it kept the chickens away from all the seedlings and bags. When that door is open and the chickens are in their run Tas is in his glory. He runs as fast as he can from end to end and all points in between and that is also why we did it. He will never be allowed to run free like that because he just goes. A small yard would never give him the ability to really let it fly and watching him fly and seeing how happy he is and how much he loves to run like that and then slide into his pile of leaves makes it all worth it.
