Backyard Project Phase 3: Fence

The next phase of my “Backyard Project” was to change out the fence.  Behind our backyard is a major road so that fence belongs to the city, but the side fences are mine and they were starting to look kinda crappy.  I have a shared neighbor fence and a “street-side” fence since we live on a corner lot.  The street-side fence didn’t look too horrible, but if I were to change one, I would have to change ’em all for the sake of consistency.

Here are some before shots:

I’ve done some fence work in the past on my parent’s rental property.  It’s not a glamours job.  We did those with hammer and nail and it felt like my arm was disconnected from my body for a solid week afterwards.  Learning my lesson there, I decided to purchase an air compressor from Harbor Freight and rent a nail gun from Home Depot.  This was a life saver!

Not to mention, I had my good ole miter saw to cut the rails to size

So with my trusty Trailblazer and a big boy trailer from Uhaul I was off to Home Depot again for all the necessary lumber.

11 hours later (with some help from my Dad and a “buddy” from 5th street), we were able to do all the demolition, finish the street-side and get a majority of the frame up for the neighbor side:

I added a rot board on the bottom of the fence.  It was extra work, but I think it makes things look a little nicer and it’ll help the pickets from rotting away at the bottom due to the ground’s moisture.  It also helped in keeping the entire fence level all the way through.  We used cedar pickets, which smell awesome and look great.

With any construction, there’s the debris from the demolition.  Now we’ll have to figure out how to get rid of it!

My initial thought was to use Waste Management’s “Bagster” service (look it up if you don’t know about it, seems pretty cool), but then Sheena and I decided it might be better to hire someone to haul it out for us.

Now with the fence finished, I can focus more on cleaning and clearing out the patio space and making it more of a usable area.