Safe As Milk

That’s what our home inspector laughed and told us when he looked at the fence that came with our house. We love having a white picket fence, but it was rotting badly and falling apart in places. This weekend, we replaced it. Thank god the posts were sturdy and in good shape. I don’t know if we would have undertaken this otherwise.

Here’s before:

Taking it down took no time. We have a rubber mallet that made short work of it. It practically fell down by itself.

Next up were the stringers. Thanks to Laura’s help and Aaron’s model fence across the street (not to mention every tool under the sun), this was pretty easy. By the end of Saturday, we had made only one (!) trip to Home Depot. The stringers were up, and all the pickets were cut down to size and waiting in the driveway.

We made so much headway Saturday, that we got a late-ish start Sunday. Mistake. Turns out the nails we bought were waaaay too big for the task. After a bonus trip to HD, I was ready to go with the nailgun.

Nailguns rock. My arm is going to kill me tomorrow from the constant lifting of the 13-pound gun, but that beats the crap out of quadruple-nailing 179 pickets by hand.

After one more trip to HD, the fence is done. We still have to build the gates and paint the thing, but so far so good. We could not have done it without the help of Laura, our neighbors Fred & Freddie (father & son) and Brett, and the guys at the HD Tool Rental center. I have been known to curse HD, but not today.