New Backyard Fence almost finished!

Welcome to our photoblog update with the new fence photos. We are almost completely finished with it. The only things left are to build the arbor over the small gate into the backyard, and to put some wheels on the large gates in the driveway gate on the other side of the house. Small potatoes!

The hardest part was making the fence curve around the patio. You can see in this picture that we had to place the posts close together (3 to 4 feet apart) to make it look more like a curve. Every cut on every board (except for the vertical flat boards you see in the photo) had to be cut, usually with compound angles. I put on about 10 miles a day walking back and forth between the fence and the shop cutting and recutting the angles. I think we will not try this again!

Also, you can see our new fire pit table in this photo. We just bought it, and it is great to sit around on cool nights and enjoy a fire made from all of the waste pieces of cedar fencing!

From the outside, the fence looks really good.
We tried to set it back from the street, so it didn't look imposing, and like we were trying to keep the rest of the neighborhood out. We were a little worried that after moving into an established neighborhood where the previous owners were really popular, any changes we make were going to be critically watched. So we used the lattice-topped fencing and put the curve in the fence gate to try and make the fence seem friendly. We are happy with it, but who knows what the neighbors think!

Here is a picture of the new fence gate on the garage side of the house. You can see our plum tree behind the fence. Angus has already eaten a ton of green plums! The neighbors tell us the plums are very good, so we assume that means they are all used to getting plums from the tree every year.

Next, we have to now rebuild the fences between us and the neighbors. Our neighbors to the right in this picture are an Indian couple and their children. We don't think they have done too much house maintenance in the past. But we are negotiating with them to get them to pitch in and we can split the cost of rebuilding the fence between us. They are pretty nice folks, so it should be fun working together.

So that's all for the fencing for now. It's been two months of weekends spent on it! But this part is done and we can now enjoy it for a while.

Thanks for checking out the photoblog!

John & Annie