Magical.
Fences are expensive, but it was a necessary early expense due to the fact that Duke, the mud monster, could totally take down the existing fence. So I set about researching contractors, getting bids and determining what I actually wanted for the backyard.
Early on, I fell in love with horizontal style fences. You know, the ones that have the pickets running horizontally instead of vertically. They are just gorgeous... for flat spaces. Unfortunately (or fortunately, considering it's about 50% more expensive for horizontal fences), my lot has a bit of a steep slope to it. A horizontal fence just wasn't in our cards.
You'd think that'd it'd be easy to just find a fence company to build a fence. It wasn't. I talked to five contractors, had four come out to bid it and then had to negotiate the price. Some things to consider if you are ever looking to build a fence (or have one built):
1.) What are the restrictions that the city imposes on your lot? (Have to be within easements.) Can you have an 8ft/6ft tall fence? (6 ft) What are the easements? (5 ft neighbor to neighbor, 10 ft from street)
2.) Do you need a permit? (No)
3.) What type of wood? (Cedar)
4.) How do you want the posts set into the ground? (Wet cement)
5.) How many gates do you want? (3) Do you want a gate to be a double gate in order to allow construction equipment access? (Yes)
6.) How many cross bars do you want? (3)
7.) How do you want the pickets attached to the cross bars? (Galvanized nails, screws are a great option, but it is much more labor intensive)
8.) Do you want to have the fence follow the contours of the slope or do you want it to be straight across?
The last question is the only place we had issues with our contractor. I did not understand what he was explaining to me, so I said "I want the fence to follow the contours of the slope," not knowing that this meant that the top could be all jagged-y (technical term) and not a nice even slanted line. (You can see the issue towards the left of the picture where the fence kind of goes up a little bit). You can also see Duke enjoying his backyard and the double gate.
Here is an after shot that includes the old fence before we took it down:
And the other side a little later on after we removed the wood panels and tried to take out the old posts:
Here's a full series of pictures of the backyard with the new fence:
We still need to move the old panels out of the way (the old fence wood we'll put to good use on other projects) and clean up the backyard (we're waiting for it to cool down before we start that project), but the fence is a fantastic improvement over the old one.
All in all, the project took two weeks due to rain delays.
