Make Way!

The backyard is coming along. Even though forward progress at this point may look like exactly the opposite, since we have killed everything, converted our shell path to dirt, and dug numerous holes and trenches…it actually is forward progress. Our first peek at something that genuinely looks like an improvement was the fence on the side that we tore down and rebuilt a few feet forward. Not don’t get overwhelmed, this wasn't a lot of fence, only one small section and the gate…15 feet or so.

We realized (and I credit this one to The Engineer) that we had a few feet on the other side of the fence that were entirely useless. Between the fence and carport was about three feet of space that was an absolute barren wasteland.

It only made sense to move the fence up to the carport and include that extra space in our backyard where we could use it instead of keeping the barren wasteland. This enlarged the space we will have for our garden and also allowed us to relocate our irrigation pump around the corner where it would pretty much be out of sight. The relocation also cut down on the noise too. Double win!

The Engineer made quick work of the demo and I was all too happy to see the old fence go. It really was in rough shape.

Without the fence panel it is much easier to visualize where the old and new fences were/would be located. The old fence came right off the corner of the new house and we pushed the new fence all the way up to the concrete slab for the carport.

We worked late that night and set the new fence posts and screwed on 1x6 cross supports for the fence slats.

The next day I nailed up fence slats while The Engineer was working on moving the pump to its new home.

We measured for the gate and built it on the ground to make it easier and hung it pretty easily.

We then set two other posts to connect the new fence back to the old fence. We didn't reuse the old posts because we pushed the gate over just a bit to maximize on space so the old post ended up in the gate opening.

I then screwed in my horizontal 1x6’s and nailed the fence slats again. I did the short side first so the corner would look nice.

This way I could make sure there wasn't an odd gap in the corner since I butted the front slat directly to the back slat.

After nailing the rest of the slats on we were left with a much better looking fence and a little more space!

You can tell why we were excited about the fence being the first thing that looks like ‘actual’ progress because the rest of the after picture looks way worse that the before! The Engineer was working on the pump the entire time I was working on finishing the fence. I’ll be posting about our progress with the pump and irrigation soon!