1910 American Foursquare: Project #1 - Fence for the Pups

The best part of getting out of the city and into the burbs...The yard, modest in size, but a yard. Gone were the 3-4 time daily dog walks. It was time to put in a fence, as quickly as possible. 

Highlights:
- We used all Home Depot supplies which we modified to look higher end
- The project took about 3 (15 hours) days with the help of a couple family members
- Total cost was about $1k
- We stained the hell out of it (twice per season) to help protect the cheap spruce
- We secured the panels in between the posts rather than behind them using small L brackets and coated screws.
- We removed the gothic and added a pressure treated topper for a high end look. 

Lessons Learned:
- We used concrete to secure the posts, still not sure if this is the best practice as apparently it can increase rot speed
- Call dig safe... I cranked on a gas pipe that I thought was a tree root. Luckily it didn't break
- This was a lot of work but we were really proud of the outcome

1. Prepping the yard: We cleaned out the perimeter of the property which had a ton of debris and a lot of old metal fencing which we ripped out. We never checked property lines but made assumptions about what made the most sense... Plus we figured that whatever we did the neighbors would love compared to what was existing.

2. Getting the supplies home: We lived really really close to Home Depot and only owned a VW Golf. So we rented trucks pretty often

3. Modifying the fence and installing the first sections: We wanted the cheap price of the Spruce Gothic fence but really wanted a higher end look. We decided to cut the gothic off using a circular saw and using a piece of pressure treated lumber to act as the cap... it worked perfectly. We dug the holes with a post digger, poured in about 2" of gravel, leveled the post, and poured in concrete.

Introducing Gemma: Our yard looked like a junkyard.

4. Sloping the stockade: We did this by hand... We installed a piece that intersected the top half of the fence diagonally. We added a chalk line to line up our nails before cutting off the excess. We were super proud of this part.

5. Adding the picket around the driveway: We didn't take a lot of measurements to find out where our stockade would end and we decided to chance it. Essentially deciding to end on the next full piece prevented us from making shorter sections. This meant that we had to cross the driveway. We didn't have the tools to put a post through the drive so we decided to let it sit flush on the ground and secure it later. Turns out it was pretty sturdy and we never did. Plus, if we ever needed to get a vehicle in the back yard we could by removing the L Brackets... they were really handy.

6. The Gate: We made the gate out of a section of picket so that we could make the width custom. We secured the gate with a wire kit to keep it from warping... if I could do it over I would have done this with wood. The wire rusted over time and didn't look that great. Notice the floating post over the driveway. 

9. Staining: We purchased a 5 gallon pail of Olympia Cedar stain/tint. We figured this would help prevent browning of the fence so quickly. For the stockade we only stained the inside as that is what we could see and we didn't have great access to the outside (it was also mostly shaded). We waited a couple of months before staining to ensure that the wood was 100% dry (it's surprisingly wet when you buy it). I stained the entire thing about 3 times (Summer, fall, spring). The results were great:

8. Finishing Touches: In addition to adding rails we added plastic toppers around the stockade ($2/ea on Amazon) and lighted toppers on the picket. A year later we swapped the lighted plastic out for the lighted copper for about $5 ea at Home Depot because the plastic ones broke (we expected this). We also had a rainy day Pinterest moment and made lanterns.

Introducing Dexter: He's the man.