Yard Work Part Two: The Fence

It's Sunday night at the old Tudor hacienda, and I suppose that means it's time for a blog post. Good thing I already started this one last week, eh?

Of course, I'd be a lot farther along with this post if I hadn't spent the last half-hour cursing at Blogger because it won't format my posts properly, but there you go. You get what you pay for with this blog, and I get what I pay for with this free blogging software.

Anyway, enough belly-aching about things we cannot change - let's start belly aching about the things we already did change!

When last we left our heroes, they had successfully, and largely without incident - aside from that whole building, dismantling, and storing the storage space part - assembled a brand new resin kit shed! A feat of which we are inordinately proud, considering it took us something like seven months to do what most people can do in an afternoon.

But with the shed complete, it was time to turn our attention to enclosing our plastic storage solution with a nice cedar fence. Why, you may ask, did we want to hide such a regal and well-made structure? Well, we noticed, on our many, many walks around this neighbourhood, that storage and garden sheds seemed to be mostly either in people's backyards, or else tucked carefully away where they were less conspicuous. Not wanting to disrupt the aesthetic of the neighbourhood (any more than we already have), we had planned to extend the existing fence and wrap it around the front of the shed to connect to the wall of the garage.

As much as it pains me to report, and as disappointed as I'm sure all my loyal readers are with the news, it was a pretty straightforward process. I mean, we had already prepared and set the spikes, so it was just a matter of installing the fence posts, and then building the panels in place.

Oh, sure, there were some weird angles, and the spikes weren't EXACTLY in line, but really - it was a fairly simple manner to just build the damn thing. So here are some shots of the work in progress:

I took that last shot up there about 6:30 on a Sunday evening while the Crazy Neighbour™ - who was helping me install the fence boards into the panels - was over at his place digging around in his pile of wood. He was looking for one last piece of cedar 1x6, because our materials estimates were so damn precise that I had accidentally used ONE too many of the full pieces while cutting down boards to make the panels look symmetrical. As always seems to happen (seriously, best neighbour EVER), he had a board tucked away in the ceiling of his shop, and we were able to finish installing the fence pieces that evening.

After that, it was a matter of truing up the gate and installing its hardware, building a little accent piece for over the gate (that also ties the two sides together a little better), and lopping off the tops of the other posts to match the rest of the fence. Which we finished yesterday:

Oh, and here it is from the back:

So far, the most common comment we've heard from neighbours and passers-by is: "Why did you cover up that lovely little shed?"

I haven't actually punched anybody who said that, but there's still time.

Remember the palm tree? Well, this weekend we made use of a perfectly good house guest to finally pull that damn stump out. As you can see, it left a hell of a hole (on the left side here):

Oh, and see the nice bare earth on the rest of our makeshift patio section there? Yeah, next weekend we're completely abusing our friendship with a lovely couple and making them help us dig it all out in preparation for putting in the REAL patio. Good thing for us they like - and will work for - beer. Man, that's gonna be fun! Yeah!

 

 

 

NOT.

Hey, just for shits and giggles, how about a return of everyone's favorite feature!

The Injury Report

Oh, man, my hands.

So.

Many.

Splinters.

I've got splinters in fingers I didn't know I even HAD.

To say nothing of all the times my fancy impact driver slipped off the screw head and started burrowing into the flesh of my hand, or - in at least one memorable occasion - the webbing between my thumb and forefinger.

But mostly it was the splinters.

Ouch. Stupid rough cut cedar.