A
couple of days after my family came up and helped me with the first part of the
fencing project, my neighbour helped out with the second part – pouring concrete
into the post holes. He didn’t just blop
it into the holes though – they were poured and shaped – what he did (he works
with concrete for a living) was to pour the concrete and then he rounded up the
pour so that the concrete comes up the posts a little – this way, the soil will
have hard work to pile up around the posts and with the creosote Dad painted on
the bottoms, the posts will last that much longer and I won’t have to worry
about the posts rotting away at the base any time soon.
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| Rounded concrete |
Friday
of this week, Mum & Dad came up for the day and we built the fence. Dad had
had me measure up and down and across the posts at a number of different spots
and I also held back about 8 boards from the old fence as he didn’t have enough
spare lumber on hand to complete the entire section. We got started by pulling out all of the
needed tools (Dad brought almost everything needed up with him) and getting the
boards piled and ready to go. He pulled
the braces off of the posts and we stacked the lumber on those as the grass was
deep and a little wet from the previous day’s rain.
Dad
had these really cool collapsible saw-horses he got from Lee Valley Tools a
number of years ago (I need a pair!) and set those up as well. And we got down to it! The cross pieces went up first and then the
boards went on and then the top pieces went on. Start to finish we were done
in about 3 hours!
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| From the alley |
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| From the yard |
After
we had lunch and packed things up, Mum & Dad headed home and since Jasmine
was still at “Doggie Day Care” for another couple of hours, I opted to go over
to Slegg Lumber, pick up stain and get the fence stained.
It
looks pretty damn amazing if I do say so myself!
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| Stained |
The
fourth part of the back fence project will be a lattice panel on the top of
both sections – for a little more privacy from the back alley. That part will,
hopefully, be completed before the end of summer.
Tomorrow
I will be taking a drive over to Slegg Lumber again – this time to price out
the lattice and get more information about sizes and so forth. The other thing I will be doing is getting
some 1” x 6” cedar boards that I can make a raised gardening bed with – my plan
is to lay a long skinny one out in front of the fence and plant raspberry
canes. The bed will actually serve a second purpose – aside from producing
raspberries, I mean. The section of the
fence that is at the corner of the yard sits quite high up off the ground – the
raspberry bed will effectively prevent Jasmine from escape under the fence.
With
love across the waters,
Wow that looks great! I was thinking about doing something like this as well. I used a fence calculator to figure out how much it would cost. Was it easy as a DIY project?
ReplyDeleteHi Avery, Thanks for reading!
DeleteI had both my Dad and my Brother helping me out with the project - Dad has built and repaired fences over the years and made the DIY part of this super easy for me.
I think that, had I been trying to do something like this on my own I would have been able to (it would have taken a LOT longer) as long as I had the right tools and some patience to go along with it - a project of this nature (for me anyhow) really would require two sets of hands.
Good luck!!