More Fence Progress

It's been over a month since we fixed the falling down fence on one side of our house and it's still standing up. Yay! I was trying to figure out when will we have another good stretch of time to tackle the next phase of the project when Justin found out he has a whole week between Christmas and New Years off. 

After dropping the little D in daycare today, we drove to Home Depot to get the supplies. We had a problem with nails getting jammed in the nail gun. I thought the nail gun was broken, but it was actually the nails, they were the wrong angle for the gun. It will take us 3 trips, including one tomorrow to find nails with the correct angle and length. 

The fence in this corner fell over during the house renovation. Our carpenter built a temporary fence that gets blown over every time the wind picked up. It's actually been leaning up against a trash can. This happened today when we pulled the trash can away. 

The section of the "fence"made of a left over piece of 2x6 and some old floor boards.

I don't know how old this fence is but most of the 2x4s are completely rotted. 

This section came down much easier than I anticipated. I used a Sawzall for the first time and just cut the rails on each end. Whole thing took less than a minute.

The 4x4 posts are still very sturdy so we are not going to waste time and energy replacing them. We are  going to attach an additional 3 feet of lumber to what's there already. You can see the 2x4 rails are rotted away. 

Digging holes for the posts is our favorite (sarcasm) part of building the fence, Justin said tonight his fingers are still trembling from gripping the hole digger, poor thing. 

One post down, one more to go.

We changed the shape of the fence that's why we had to build two new posts. Unlike last time, we got the quick drying concrete so we were able to continue working after lunch when the concrete had set enough to keep working.

I wasted several feet of 2x4s when I got the measurements for the rails wrong. Many mistakes were made but we got better as the day went on.

I realized now that we probably should have left a little room between the ground and the bottom of the pickets to prevent moisture contacting the wood. Nailing in the pickets went sure fast. 

Justin the nail gunslinger. 

 We ran out of pickets at this point and it was almost time to pick little D up from daycare. It was the perfect stopping point for today. At least we no longer have a gaping hole at the back corner of our fence. If you look closely at the railing, you'll see all the nails sticking through the 2x4s creating a safety hazard. We'll have to remedy that later and use shorter nails from now on. Shall be continue...