This is the part of the view from our back patio that I love. Trees, trees and more trees. Unfortunately, when you shift your gaze downward, you see this:
A parking lot. Our neighbours are really nice, quiet people, but it's not exactly a scenic view. And now that the weather is warming up and most of our furniture is in place, the last big project for our patio is a privacy fence.
When we ordered our materials on Thursday, we were told that they couldn't be delivered until Monday. Maybe Saturday, but probably Monday. Since Adam's brother and his wife were already coming down to help out, we decided to rent a power auger so we could at least make some progress by digging the holes for the fence posts.
After measuring, re-measuring and marking the location of each hole with a ground stake (Adam had measured the exact length of the panels and fence posts at the store), it took Adam and his brother the better part of the day to dig five holes. Even with the power auger, they had to stop every few minutes to dig out roots and rocks. Like, HUGE rocks. It was brutal.
Funnily enough, just as they started digging, the delivery truck showed up with the rest of the materials. Somehow, Adam found the energy to keep working, and after our amazing helpers left for the day - seriously, we can't thank you guys enough! - my mom took Hannah to her house so Adam and I could set the posts (thanks Mom!).
We set the end posts first, then used string to help us keep everything in a straight line. There was lots of measuring and re-measuring to ensure our posts were spaced juuust right for the fence panels, and that little yellow post level turned out to be our smartest purchase by far. We managed to get all five posts in the ground by around 7:30 pm, but I snapped this picture on Sunday morning.
The concrete needs at least 24 hours to set before the posts can bear weight (we went with the ready-to-use stuff and hand-mixed it in our wheelbarrow after watching this video), so we weren't able to hang the fence panels on Sunday. The ground is pretty uneven here, so we're planning to hang the panels in a straight line and build up the ground below with fresh soil as needed. We purposely bought longer posts than we needed so we could trim the tops.
So part one is done! If you're planning a similar project, I found some helpful how-tos here, here and here. Oh, and clearly we need a landscaping part three to this project. This part of the lawn needs some serious love!
0 comments:
Post a Comment