I’m exhausted…day seven of fence work and I feel broken. Yesterday I had two separate altercations with cinder blocks that left me looking like I had a case of road rash, but on the inside of one ankle and the inside of the other knee. Today I am bruised, scratched, and battered.
Still lots left to do since the entire project is a snowball. Take out the old fence posts, enlarge post hole, need gravel for fill, move large planters across the front of the house and scrape where the planters were sitting, fill wheelbarrows full of much hated gravel into the, wheel it up the driveway, down the street, down the neighbour’s driveway, shovel it into the hole. Repeat. Repeat. And so on…..
I’m grateful the neighbour loaned us their wheelbarrow, it made yesterday and today go much more smoothly, though it’s not as colourful as these ones down at the lumber yard.
The last of the old hideous fence is gone. One short post left standing where no fence will go again; one huge branch of the rhododendron is resting on it and to remove it would probably lead to a disaster. So that post will be painted and left where it is.
The woman we bought the place off was a bit of a nutbar, and not well liked by the other owners. She had a pair of dogs that she let free to do their business anywhere they chose, which did not please the others. One of the dogs was also apparently aggressive and threatened the woman who used to live in the unit behind us. I guess that was the last straw and the others forced her to do something or lose the dog.
She built the fence that we have hated since moving in, but she did some really weird things in some sections. She just strung snow fencing across the cedar hedge off the deck (I ripped that out the first spring we were here), and also nailed black snow fencing along fence posts under the laurels that split our areas with the unit behind us. I honestly can’t fathom why she didn’t put the same shitty thin siding on that section. Instead that section had a sheet of the black plastic mesh nailed with a million nails and the bottom buried under boulders.
Yeah, that was fun to get out today.
My job.
I now despise snow fencing.
However, I “am” thrilled that removing that section led to exposing both the massive trunk of the cedar that we and our neighbours share, as well as some huge trunks of a very large and very old laurel that also acts as a natural fence between our areas. We will not be building any fencing in that section since it’s line of sight from the living room and the greenery provides a nice screen that also gives more depth to the yard.
As an added bonus, removing and not replacing that section also allowed me to regrade the area behind the rhododendron and it’s now a fairly level area large enough for a picnic table (not doing that), or a hot tub (maybe), or the two muskoka chairs plus a hidden bicycle locker (most likely). The entire area feels much larger with that section of fence gone.
Everything about this project has involved inventive thinking every step of the way. But it is coming along nicely.
Tomorrow we finish the framing for the last sections of the main fence. Then the interior posts need to be painted black, and then we can nail the slats on, screw the fascia over the outside of the main posts where the slats meet, and then add a single slat down the centre of each six foot section to keep the slats spaced and keep them from drooping over time.
Once that’s all done, we can stain the cedar slats and move to the inside panels, get a few more loads of soil for both the inside and outside, plant a few grasses on the outside posts, seed some grass, pull the big Japanese Skimmias and sword ferns out of their front planters and plant them across the front of the courtyard wall permanently, add soil, mulch that and around the corner, fill the driveway side where the fence was removed and is not being replaced, figure out what to do with the Lion’s Head Maple in the big planter, dig out the Korean lilac tree and move it…somewhere….extend the irrigation, extend the outdoor lighting…and other things that I can’t seem to think of at the moment.
The really awesome part, besides all of it, is how many people have stopped to tell us how great it is looking. Yesterday afternoon a woman stopped her car in the middle of the road and rolled down her window to tell me how pleased she was with how it was coming. That feels really great.
Hard work, but a great summer project and the perfect summer to do it.
I need more wine. And drugs. I need drugs.
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