Hey guys!
As promised, now that we're getting a little break between wedding seasons I wanted to catch up on some posts that have been sitting here waiting for my attention.
First up? We built a privacy fence between ours and our neighbors' yards!
When we moved in, we had privacy fencing on all sides of our yard except one. This one:
yikes.
Every year, the weeds and vines that were all wrapped up in this old, rusty chain link fence would die down and we would say to our neighbors "This year we're doing it! We're going to get out and build a privacy fence!" and every year, we would get busy and lazy and nothing would happen.
Then we got new neighbors and they didn't know about our cycle of busy/lazy/next year we're totally doing this and so we had to get our butts in gear and actually do it ; )
One HUGE motivator? Our new neighbor works for Star Lumber and was able to get the supplies delivered to our house for free. *~Luxury~*
So we started by clearing out as much of that brush as we could so that we could then we cut the chain link around the stumps that were grown into it:
Those were some gnarly little stumps.
You can see in that photo that we had already poured the forms for the fence posts. My mom and dad helped us with that as a birthday present and so we just put them up on the Saturday that they had time and then came back to tackle The Stumps™.
Here's the view of our sad little garage from our neighbor's yard. P.S. is there anything weirder than seeing your house from your neighbor's yard? No. No there isn't.
I'll tell you a couple of gals who didn't mind the shake up - our neighbors' chickens Juicy and Craig. All that dirt, all those worms and grub. It was fine dining and free range for those ladies for about a week and they loved it. One thing they didn't love? Me constantly taking photos of them : ) This is Juicy btw:
Anywho, after all of the brush was cut down and (most of) the chain link was gone Conan and my dad got started on deciding where the posts would be and digging holes for them.
They used a guide line tied between the already existing posts at each end of the yard and then hung the plumb bob down from it to find the center of each hole and make sure the posts were going to be level.
Voila! Posts! And some very ingenious forms to hold them since the holes were a little too large for the originally planned piece-of-scrap-with-hole-cut-in-the-middle technique.
We let those sit for a couple of days and then it was officially fence time!
We started at the back of the yard since it was wonderfully stump free and if you hadn't already heard, my method of working is start with the easy stuff so you feel good enough about yourself to keep going ; )
Then? It was stump time. Here is Juicy inspecting the structural integrity of this guy and also worms mmmmmm worms!
Conan would dig down until he could get an axe after it and then swing away until it was loose enough to break in half.
Here's the mangled stump + chain link pile. Gnarly, huh?
After that, I put down the camera and we got in a nice little rhythm of me picking up a plank, holding the level on top of it while Conan screwed it to the 2x4. We went from stumps to fence in a day and by the end of it we were doing that thing where an hour goes by and you haven't said anything to each other because you're both thinking about cheeseburgers and just trying to.get.it.done.
After we were all done, we went to Lowe's and bought metal edging, weed fabric and mulch to (hopefully) help keep this little patch weed free for a while.
This is the first time we've ever sprung for the metal edging and I have to say, I really like it. The stakes are sort of welded onto each piece of edging so you pop them off and then just tamp them down into the little slots in the edging.
The pieces overlap and stay nice and straight, too
Shorty was mucho concerned for his little chicky friends trapped on the other side of the fence!
*whine*
And there it is, all done!
Neat!
Here's a before and after to save you the scroll:
It's been about almost 2 months with the fence and everything feels so neat and clean back there. We've also taken the camper out a couple of times since this has been done and it makes backing it in and getting in and out of it when we're loading stuff SO much easier without having to push back branches and get thwacked in the face with weeds all the time.
To give you an idea of how much a fence about 56' costs (because we were googling that ourselves before we started). This was our materials list:
And this was an our half of the fence cost: $382
So, about $764 total
Up next? We prepped and painted some of the house you guys!!!! It looks SO nice! Can't wait to share it!
Until then, Keep Smiling and Happy 4th of July!
As promised, now that we're getting a little break between wedding seasons I wanted to catch up on some posts that have been sitting here waiting for my attention.
First up? We built a privacy fence between ours and our neighbors' yards!
When we moved in, we had privacy fencing on all sides of our yard except one. This one:
yikes.
Every year, the weeds and vines that were all wrapped up in this old, rusty chain link fence would die down and we would say to our neighbors "This year we're doing it! We're going to get out and build a privacy fence!" and every year, we would get busy and lazy and nothing would happen.
Then we got new neighbors and they didn't know about our cycle of busy/lazy/next year we're totally doing this and so we had to get our butts in gear and actually do it ; )
One HUGE motivator? Our new neighbor works for Star Lumber and was able to get the supplies delivered to our house for free. *~Luxury~*
So we started by clearing out as much of that brush as we could so that we could then we cut the chain link around the stumps that were grown into it:
Those were some gnarly little stumps.
You can see in that photo that we had already poured the forms for the fence posts. My mom and dad helped us with that as a birthday present and so we just put them up on the Saturday that they had time and then came back to tackle The Stumps™.
Here's the view of our sad little garage from our neighbor's yard. P.S. is there anything weirder than seeing your house from your neighbor's yard? No. No there isn't.
I'll tell you a couple of gals who didn't mind the shake up - our neighbors' chickens Juicy and Craig. All that dirt, all those worms and grub. It was fine dining and free range for those ladies for about a week and they loved it. One thing they didn't love? Me constantly taking photos of them : ) This is Juicy btw:
Anywho, after all of the brush was cut down and (most of) the chain link was gone Conan and my dad got started on deciding where the posts would be and digging holes for them.
They used a guide line tied between the already existing posts at each end of the yard and then hung the plumb bob down from it to find the center of each hole and make sure the posts were going to be level.
Voila! Posts! And some very ingenious forms to hold them since the holes were a little too large for the originally planned piece-of-scrap-with-hole-cut-in-the-middle technique.
We let those sit for a couple of days and then it was officially fence time!
We started at the back of the yard since it was wonderfully stump free and if you hadn't already heard, my method of working is start with the easy stuff so you feel good enough about yourself to keep going ; )
Then? It was stump time. Here is Juicy inspecting the structural integrity of this guy and also worms mmmmmm worms!
Conan would dig down until he could get an axe after it and then swing away until it was loose enough to break in half.
Here's the mangled stump + chain link pile. Gnarly, huh?
After that, I put down the camera and we got in a nice little rhythm of me picking up a plank, holding the level on top of it while Conan screwed it to the 2x4. We went from stumps to fence in a day and by the end of it we were doing that thing where an hour goes by and you haven't said anything to each other because you're both thinking about cheeseburgers and just trying to.get.it.done.
This is the first time we've ever sprung for the metal edging and I have to say, I really like it. The stakes are sort of welded onto each piece of edging so you pop them off and then just tamp them down into the little slots in the edging.
The pieces overlap and stay nice and straight, too
Shorty was mucho concerned for his little chicky friends trapped on the other side of the fence!
*whine*
And there it is, all done!
Neat!
Here's a before and after to save you the scroll:
It's been about almost 2 months with the fence and everything feels so neat and clean back there. We've also taken the camper out a couple of times since this has been done and it makes backing it in and getting in and out of it when we're loading stuff SO much easier without having to push back branches and get thwacked in the face with weeds all the time.
To give you an idea of how much a fence about 56' costs (because we were googling that ourselves before we started). This was our materials list:
· 4 bags 80 lb. Quikrete
· 16 2x4x8” pieces (cedar or pressure treated)
· 8 2 3/8” x 8’ galvanized posts
· 8 galvanized post caps
· 14 steel to wood brackets
· 156 5 ½” x 6’ fence boards (cedar or pressure treated)
· 5 lbs. 1 ½” deck screws (star bit included)
And this was an our half of the fence cost: $382
So, about $764 total
Up next? We prepped and painted some of the house you guys!!!! It looks SO nice! Can't wait to share it!
Until then, Keep Smiling and Happy 4th of July!
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| A picture we took after a long country drive in the Waggy this past weekend. *heart eyes emoji* |
