The Chaos of Our New House: New Fence!

Hello again!

Well here is a little story that should get this ball rolling again, for a while at least! This post is about a fence... a "fence post" if you will!! ;)

So as many of you would know, or maybe not, when we bought this house, there was an old fence in the back yard which was in a state of disrepair. The cedar posts were rotted through to the core, paint was peeling off, the rails and pickets were being held up by moss alone because the nails had long since rusted away!

As the story goes with this particular fence, our backyard neighbour, Dave, had constructed this fence some time ago to prevent both the riff and the raff that once resided here, from invading his territory. We had met this particular riffraff... this fence was a smart move on Dave's part!!

Well as it so happens, nature would eventually have it's way with this old fence and it would succumb to the elements, taking a new perpendicular position to that which it previously held. Interestingly though, it was almost as if this fence had know that it's purpose had been served and it could now lay down arms and rest knowing that it's duty was fulfilled... that or the thing just rotted and fell over!!

One day there was a knock at the door. It was the fence... actually, it was the fence's builder Dave and his son, coming the retrieve what was left of the fence and to offer up a suggestion. Originally, Dave and his son were planning to rebuild the fence during the summer of 2010, (ah summer...) and they wondered if I would be able to give them a hand to get a new fence put up before the fall. Naturally I agreed to help them since I had the necessary tools and the skills for the job. But as things turned out, for whatever reason, Dave and his son were unfortunately unable to follow through with their plans and we were left with a stack of fence boards sitting in our back yard.

What now, you ask? Enter Mr. Gibson!

After accepting the request from Dave to build the fence in his place, I called upon my good friend and fellow carpenter Doug and my son Jamie to help me create this masterpiece! I use that term loosely at this point because neither one us had ever constructed a pre-fab panel fence before and we really had no idea what direction we were to go in! Well, besides right to left, but after a bit of head scratching and brainstorming, we had the first 2 panels in place!

Soon after our first beer we had a system worked out and the rest of the work was gravy! Fasten one side of the panel to the post which we had previously cemented into the ground, dig the next hole with the post hole auger, drop in a post, fasten it to the panel making sure that it's level and plumb, fill the hole with post concrete and move to the next section!! That's it! Were able to get 60 feet of 6' high pre-fab panel fence, including posts and concrete, installed in 2 hours and we could spend the rest of that beautiful summer day remembering how happy we were that it wasn't... winter!! So long everybody!