THE FENCE IS FINISHED

The fence project this year had its challenges as we decided to use the existing round fence posts which were in good shape and solidly concreted in the ground.  We removed the wire and Stuart came up with a brilliant design to turn the round posts into “square” posts to match our fence panel design.  He built a square topper out of sections of 2 by 4’s and then faced it with a full fence height 1 by 4 board, both front and back.  Then he slid the topper/cover over the round fence post and screwed it in place.  Here’s what that looks like:

Stuart also built a jig for cutting the diamond “holes” out of the fence boards.  There were at least 112 boards to cut so the jig saved time and increased the accuracy of the cuts.

And as usual, I stained all the boards first and had the shop filled for weeks.

This is the photo progression of the project:

There was a jog in the original wire fence line so we had to put in 3 new square posts to follow our property line and tie it in to our other fence behind the shop.  Of course, that offered its own challenges.  We had to put our last post a few inches away from the shop fence post and ran into the concrete base holding the post in place.  We used an air driven chisel to break away the concrete enough to get our new post down 3 feet into the ground and level.  A bit of patience, perseverance and about an hour and a half, is all it took.

We worked the last 6 panels from the left side so we could finish away from the corner for easier access.

 And then it was all done (115 feet of new fence).  Here are the before and after photos:

Our bluebirds are busy feeding the little ones and we've had at least one casualty.  We checked the bird house yesterday and found only 3 chicks in there and one of them was dead.  Stuart removed the dead one and it seems to be business as usual for the survivors.

They should be ready to fly soon.