Wood Fence: Part I

As far as ranking favorite projects at the house go...the dry bar (post on that here) is definitely up there, but I think the new wood fence on the side of the house on the top of the list for me as well. A new wood fence isn't the most glamorous or flashy thing in the world. I mean its not a brand new kitchen, but when you disliked the previous chain link fence with green privacy slats as much as I did, a brand spankin' new wood fence feels like the best thing since sliced bread!

In the last post we ripped out the ugly chain link fence. 

That very night The Engineer and I picked up the materials to start building the new fence, which quite honestly maxed out our little truck!

It was still early enough to start work so we off loaded our materials and set up a string line along the property line. No one wants a crooked fence right? 

The property line happens to be the most unfortunate part of this project. I suppose it’s not the property line itself that is the problem, but rather the things that are on the property line. There are several trees that are directly on the line. Yes I said directly on the line, and yes I said several.

Luckily, this was not a surprise to us. We knew we had trees on the property line because they had pushed the old chain link out of the way to facilitate their growth ergo, we knew we would be working around multiple trees.

Our stretch of fence was approximately 80 ft. long and we started in the back where we would have our longest run of pre-constructed panels. Our plan was to use pre-constructed panels where possible (the cost turns out to be the same as buying the materials and building them yourself) and then build around the trees with raw materials and a little creativity.

After locating the spot for our first fence post, we almost immediately ran into root problems. Because some of the trees on our property are so old, their roots are pretty substantial and we immediately resorted to cutting them with the Sawzall. Any other method would have taken much more time and patience :)

We placed our first post, measured the location for the second, and got that one in the ground too. Since we were losing the light we held off until the morning to attach the panel. No reason to work in the dark :) We admired our two posts and packed up for the day.

The next morning got the first panel attached in no time. We shimmed the panel at the bottom to allow some clearance. With the wood away from the dirt it will be less prone to rotting. We then screwed the panel into the post once we had it level (we got it level by adding more shims).   

I was so excited to finally see a wood fence there! 

It was a simple rinse and repeat for the next several panels. 

If you recall from the demo of the chain link (here) we didn't dig up the concrete bases form the posts with the hope that we wouldn't have many new posts falling in the same position. Our bet paid off and we only had to dig one out. To get it out we dug around it until we could wiggle it and then attached ratchet straps to it and pulled! Point for us!

With six panels up it was time to get into the difficult areas around the trees. I’ll catch you in the next post for that.

Doesn’t it look good so far though?? Even with all the garbage in front of it it is way better <3