We build the wood-and-steel panel in black only. Why one colour, what matte black does against cedar and stained wood, heat, fading, what the 40-year steel warranty covers, and what to do about a scratch.
One colour, black, and on purpose. The Wood & Steel panel and the lattice top are 26-gauge corrugated steel in a matte black factory finish, set in a pre-stained wood frame, and we do not build them in grey, brown or a rusted look. Black is what nearly everyone who asks for a metal fence in the GTA is asking for, it is the colour that lets us keep the panel stocked on the yard at $169.99 instead of made to order, and it is the colour that does the least arguing with the wood around it.
A stocked panel is the whole point of buying a metal fence in Ontario instead of ordering one from British Columbia by freight, and stock has a cost: every colour we added would be a pallet of solid panels and a pallet of lattice tops sitting in Bolton for the one yard a month that wants that shade. One colour means the panel you order on Tuesday is on the yard on Wednesday, in a run of any length, and it keeps the price where it is. If you want a colour we do not build, the BC online metal-panel sellers offer a range, made to order; we would rather say so than sell you a panel we painted in the shop, which is the one thing never to do to this steel. The factory finish is what the manufacturer's limited 40-year warranty covers, and paint over it chalks and peels long before the finish underneath would have.
Black steel behind a warm stained frame reads as shadow, and shadow is what makes the frame stand forward. From the kitchen window the fence is a grid of wood with dark fields between the rails, not a black wall; the corrugation catches the light in vertical ribs, and the matte finish keeps it from flashing. Next to cedar it is the same idea with more contrast: the amber of a fresh cedar panel or the silver of an old one both sit well beside it, which is why so many yards run steel on the street side and cedar on the shared lines; the lattice top carries the same crown as our cedar lattice panels, so the two meet without a jump. On a narrow Toronto lot the face falls back and the yard reads larger, against a snowbank in February it is the only strong line in the picture, and a hedge in front of it looks greener.
A black face in full afternoon sun gets hot, the way a black car does. The sheet is thin, so it holds almost no heat and cools within minutes of shade or a breeze, and it does not radiate enough to bother a bed planted in front of it. It is not a surface to lean on at three in the afternoon in July, so a run that children or a dog lean on all day goes on the north or east side, or gets planting in front of it. The frame stays cool to the touch. Corrugated sheet in this gauge and finish is roofing and siding material before it is fence material, and a fence in the shade of a house for half the day is easier duty than a roof.
Every painted finish on steel lightens a little over decades in the sun, and dark colours show it sooner than light ones, as a faint grey haze called chalk that a rinse mostly takes off. The finish on our steel is the manufacturer's, and so is the warranty: limited, 40 years, on the steel and its finish, with the documentation available on request; its terms on fade and chalk are theirs to set, not ours to summarise. We have not watched one of our own panels through twenty Ontario summers yet; steel roofing in this class of finish has been through them on barns and houses across the province for decades. The wood frame will go grey and want a coat of stain long before the black does anything you can see from the house.
The steel and its finish, from the manufacturer, as the sheet left the factory. Not the frame, not the assembly, and not a sheet that has been cut or drilled in the field. The frame and our workmanship are NorthStar's and covered separately. The practical reading is short: leave the sheet whole and keep every fastener in the wood, and the 40-year number is yours; put a screw through the face to hang a planter and you have a hole in the finish that nobody's warranty covers.
A scratch that stays in the paint is cosmetic; leave it. A scratch that reaches bare metal is where rust could start, so touch it up: clean it, let it dry, and lay one thin coat of a matte black exterior touch-up made for painted steel along the scratch and no wider, not a rattle can over the whole panel. A dent stays a dent, the finish usually survives one, and a dent in a corrugated face is far less visible than one in a flat face. A panel that takes a hit worse than that is a panel from Bolton this week at the published price, hung on the same posts, which is the repair story the materials comparison works through. Dust, pollen and road film sit on matte black the way they sit on a black car and come off the same way: a garden hose, not a pressure washer held close to the frame.
On a wood-and-steel fence the steel is the constant and the wood is the variable. The frame is pre-stained when it leaves the shop, and on a many-years cycle it wants a fresh coat; that coat is the one colour decision you get to make later, and a warmer or darker stain changes the whole fence without touching a sheet. Tape the steel before you brush the frame.
The two panels stand at 240 Ellwood Drive West in Bolton beside the cedar ones, which is the right way to judge a colour: in daylight, against wood, at the distance you will see it from. The line is on the Wood & Steel page.
