What's On Your Project List - New Fence

 

I'm a day late due to the Labor Day holiday, but I'm linking up with Momfessionals to share What's on our project list.

We made a mad rush to get a bunch of home improvement projects done right before the baby was born, since we knew we'd have a lot less time with a newborn on our hands!  We desperately needed a new fence for our backyard; our existing fence was rotting in several places, and after some strong winds in the springtime, one side of the fence was barely standing.  In fact, my husband had to use rope and a yard stake to hold up the back of our fence to keep it from falling into the alley behind our house (embarrassing!)

Yes, that rope is holding up the entire back of our fence.

 We priced out a new fence, and realized how expensive it would be to get the kind of fence we wanted: an 8-foot, cedar, board-on-board privacy fence.  Luckily, my in-laws have built fences in their yard several times in the past, so they had the know-how to make our fence a DIY project.  Not a short, fun, or pain-free DIY, project, however.

We ordered all of the fence supplies from a local cedar company, who delivered them to our driveway. 

Seeing the raw materials made us realize how big a project this was!

It took one entire weekend to tear down the existing fence; despite the fact that it appeared to be barely standing, the prior owners had apparently reinforced it several times to keep it upright, which made it very difficult to take down.  Taking down the old fence was by far the worst part of the entire project!  Luckily, we were able to get other people to haul off all the old wood for us by listing it on Craigslist for free (a tip my in-laws gave us); I couldn't believe how many people were interested in bringing a trailer by to haul off rotting fence boards (I was so curious what they were going to do with that wood?!)

Over the next several weekends, my husband and in-laws used yard stakes and twine to mark the new fence and the post holes, rented a power auger from Home Depot to dig the post holes, mixed and poured cement to set new 10' posts, hang fence rails, attach picket boards, and finally add the trim on the top and rot board on the bottom. 

Power augering.  Inspired by the neighbor's  professional fence behind us :)

 

New posts cemented in place

It was definitely a way bigger undertaking than we had anticipated, especially since it felt like a race against the clock since I was 9 months pregnant (which also meant that I was absolutely no help in this process other than making lunch and bringing cold drinks).  In the end, however, we are thrilled with how our new fence turned out, and I am thrilled that we saved about 50% of the cost by building it ourselves!

The final product