If you are familiar with my 30 before 30 list you’ll know that we are eagerly awaiting the time that we can adopt a precious little puppy to join our family. We have both wanted one for a while, but always promised to wait until we were out of an apartment and had a yard before getting one – and now we have one! So the first step was to fence in the yard. Now you’re well aware of our DIY nature in this family, and if we can put in a little extra hard work to save some money, we are all about it. There is just something so much more satisfying about being able to look at what we have accomplished with our own two hands than something we simply purchased at the store. We truly do enjoy the simple life and I wouldn’t have it any other way : )
Now we only needed to do the back and the front of the fence as both of our neighbors already had fences up so we didn’t think it would be too difficult a task to conquer…but man were we wrong! The most difficult part of building a fence is in digging and setting the posts. The rest of the project is merely time consuming, but not all together hard. We spaced everything out, marked our posts, and set to digging the holes about 2 feet deep to set the post and fill with concrete. We each were digging a hole and were moving right along until about 4 inches down we hit rock. Hard, solid, immoveable, stubborn, ROCK. Just to give you an example of the impossible nature of this – the husband broke the post hole diggers 4 times in less than an hour. It was ridiculous. Needless to say the process of getting the posts ready took much longer than we expected!
After we finally (and by we I mean mostly the husband using every imaginable tool he could find to to break apart the stone) finished the posts we put up the boards and completed the doors last. We have two doors, one in the back to access the park behind us, and one in the front for the mower, etc. and we were able to salvage some old barn door hinges to use at the farm which was a fantastic find!
We wanted to stain the fence and found the perfect color to match our desire to keep it more rustic in nature: acorn brown. Fitting right? While the sprayer didn’t work as planned (these things never do do they?) we hand painted everything and I am just gushing over how it turned out! Now I can’t wait to get our precious little puppy sometime soon and watch her frolicking around in our newly enclosed backyard 🙂
What’s the most labor intensive house project you’ve taken on so far?
