Fence

(April-June, 2012)

Five or six years ago, Wendy and our neighbor got on a tear, and knocked down the fence separating our two yards. No big deal, the fence was about to fall down and we get along with them really well.

Here's what it looked like. Two compost bins and a big pile of dirt, with fenceposts. No real hurry on replacing the fence, unless we get a dog or something like that.

Oh. Suddenly, the fence is a priority. I put up some chicken wire on the fenceposts to keep the dog in our yard, and immediately waited for three years.

Then one day, I said to myself, "Hey self, weren't you supposed to put up a fence?" Yes. Yes I was. So I got busy.

I moved the chicken wire over, pulled out the old posts, and filled in the holes. I say that like it was easy. About half of them were - all I had to to was wiggle the fencepost back and forth a few times, and it would come right out. But half were not, and when I wiggled them, the old rotten wood snapped off at ground level. I didn't care so much about leaving the cement in the ground, but the rotting arsenic-treated wood was something I wanted to get rid of. I was able to use a bottle jack to pull out some. I screwed a big eyebolt into the broken-off end, put a chain on that, attached the chain to a lever, and used the bottle jack on the lever. This lifted and loosened them enough that I could pull them out. But others were sunk into the limestone, and that required lots of banging with a sledge hammer and a San Angelo bar (a six foot long heavy steel bar with a point on it), and lots of sweat.

I could have sworn I had more pictures of that. Oh well.

Anyway, here's the line with the stakes marking the new fencepost locations. I put them every six feet. I cut that 1x2 to six feet long to make it easy to measure. Saved a lot of time.

Here's the first fencepost. I decided on metal posts instead of wood. The metal poles they sell at the big-box stores are really thin and cheap-looking. I went to a fencing supply store and got some nice thick-walled ones. Barring major catastrophe, they'll never have to be replaced.

Awesome neighbor John took it on himself to dig the postholes. I put down the stakes and figured I'd do the holes over the next couple of weekends. Came out the next day, and the holes were dug.

But some weren't very deep. The soil here is shallow, and some of the holes were only a few inches deep before hitting solid limestone. So I rented a jackhammer and spent one Saturday hammering holes in limestone. John helped out with that, too. I could have used the original postholes, but they weren't where I needed them to be. Made for a nice solid setting for those fenceposts, though.

I thought I got picures of that, too. Oh well.

All the posts up, with all the cedar 2x4 support beams in place. I was really happy with how well all that worked out. I put the posts six feet apart. But they don't sell six-foot cedar 2x4s. So I was thinking I'd get 8-footers and cut them down, but I really didn't like the idea of wasting 2 feet on every one.

I'm standing at the lumber rack pondering this, then I look down and see that they sell 12-foot cedar 2x4s. I went home and measured just in case, and it worked out great. Three 12-footers and a cut-down 8-footer for the last stretch fit perfectly. Plus the houses are exactly twelve feet apart, so the end part where the gates will go just took two 12-footers.

Here's the gate end from the other side, showing the brackets I used to mount the 2x4s.

This is the other end, where it butts up against the back neighbor's fence. Was I not supposed to use that metal strapping to attach the fences together? No idea. Do I care? No. No, I do not. Both fences are stronger for it.

All finished! The boards have been treated with a sealer, which also makes them look nice. I used the good boards here. 7/8-inch-thick untreated cedar. The big-box stores only sell the cheap treated pine 5/8-inch-thick boards, so I went to the same fencing supply store I got the metal poles from. I also used screws instead of nails, so they'll never come loose.

John did most of the sealing. He had a couple of gallons of sealer in his garage he wanted to get rid of.

The back side.

The gates. Those were easy. Attach the hinges and the support struts on the back, then cut the 2x4s where the openings need to be. Instant gate!

Back side of the gate. I may have over-engineered it.