Fencing Things In

Wow, I haven't written on here in more than 3 months. I've been crazy busy with my Google Summer of Code project and spent most of my free time on this. Quite a bit has happened since then and I'll try to catch up in the next couple posts.

So, at the beginning of the summer, my dad and I started the project to fence in the backyard with a privacy fence. We chose treated lumber for the posts and rails and used cedar for the pickets.

All the pictures from the project are here, but I'll highlight some in this post.

Here's the holes from the post hole digger next to the neighbor's chain link fence. Annoying neighbor wanted to keep his fence so we ran the privacy fence right next to it:

Dad and I starting on the concrete work to get the posts in the ground:

The next picture is my favorite. While dad and I were making the holes for the post, we ran into what we thought was a gas line. After closer inspection, the end of it had a U-joint! After almost 2 hours of messing with it, we pulled out an 8 foot drive shaft that was buried in the back of the yard more than 3 feet at the deepest point. Here we are posing with our "trophy":

Setting the posts:

Got the rails up:

Dad pre-built a nice steel tube gate that we braced with extra lumber and concrete and hung:

After a good 5 or 6 days, we had the whole fence framed out. I spent the next month or so hanging up the pickets:

The dogs have certainly been enjoying running around the backyard with no supervision. However, I've recently started redoing the entire backyard since there's virtually no grass so the dogs are no longer allowed. More on seeding the backyard later...

Many, many, many thanks to dad for making this happen!