The Epic Fence-Building Weekend
When we bought our house, the fence was an issue. It was incomplete, poorly built and took winds like a sail, bending and flapping with every storm. In short, it was an ugly liability.
That was three years ago. Last weekend, while the house was getting painted (I’ll detail that in a later blog post!), we finally tackled the fence. Here are the results…
Before:
After:
Before:
After:
I started the demolition of the old fence on Thursday night after work, which only took a few hours.
Amanda jumped in to help when she came home from Seattle.
We dumped the old fencing and picked up new wood on Friday morning before work.
I set the new posts on Friday night so that we’d be ready to build on Saturday morning.
Scott was my partner in crime for the construction on Saturday. Sun’s out, guns out!
The Tacoma shirt and Home Depot utility belt is a fashion statement.
Scott cut the 2x4s while I set the brackets on the posts.
After the 2x4s were set, we put the 1x5s on in a “shadowbox” design and completed the bulk of the work in five hours.
You can pay most friends in beer for manual labor. Scott required an ice cream sandwich.
Here’s another view of the result!
I built the back gate on Monday night and now (before Fall) just need to cut off the top of the posts to call this job done. The fence has made a huge difference in the look of our backyard, and I’m glad it’s finally done!
Wow, looks great! Impressive that you guys did it all on your own! We need to replace ours eventually, too, and I’m dreading it. It’s old and rotting, though, and every time there’s a big storm, a different section will fall down. It’s a mess! So how much would you say you saved by doing it yourselves?
Thanks, Roxanne! We saved in a couple ways. First, labor! We saved about $1,200 in labor costs from our bid estimates. Second, materials. We were able to reuse 3/4 of the 4x4s, so that helped, but the total cost was under $500 because we went to the Mill Outlet Lumber on South Adams (https://www.facebook.com/MillOutletLumber) instead of Home Depot or Lowes and saved at least 50 cents per board. What could have easily cost $1,800 to $2,200 cost hired out only cost about $450.
Thanks for the details! Did you (or do you plan to) stain or paint the wood?
Yep, going to stain it with something clear to keep the natural cedar look. Going to do that in a couple months to give the wood some time to dry out. Apparently that helps it take the stain.