Wednesday, September 12, 2007
 

Another home improvement project in the can

(Er, I mean, the fence project is done... the next project that involves being "in the can", renovating the back bathroom, will happen likely after the kitchen has been reconstructed so stay tuned until 2008 or 2009 on that one.)

A brief entr'act post to show off the completed fence, which I finished an hour or two ago. Now the neighbor's cars can't be seen from the porch! (This photo was taken from the street in front of my house, and that car at right belongs to a visitor of the woman next door. Oddly this car has "School Zone" written on the steering wheel, serious.) Since you love stupidities and I love minutae, here are some details...

I found a solution for the short measurement (which when I re-measured yesterday morning was 70" at the bottom, not 71"!): The panels are made up of vertical slats, four solid horizontal pieces, and some flimsy horizontal lattuce work. On Tuesday I removed the rightmost side which is held in by four screws, removed one 1.75" wide slat, and cut about 1.5" off anything that was horizontal with a hacksaw. I then used a Dremel with a cutting wheel to recreate the 'pegs' that were on the ends of the four horizontal pieces, and a little wood glue when I put the right side back on. With a minimum of hammering and pole-pushing (there was some, since the top of the posts measured 69" apart!) the shortened piece went in, and life could go on.

I managed to get that edit job done fairly quickly, so this left me enough time in the day to measure out the final span, buy 160 pounds of Quikcrete™ (this Lowe's didn't have 50 pound bags, only 80's), dig a hole, plant the post, and fill 'er up with concrete. And I did measure the span repeatedly to make sure I didn't screw this one up... once dry, the base distance was 72.25" or so. Today, Wednesday, I put up the brackets on the pole and hung the fence. Yaay... oh, wait, it's visibly not level to the rest of the sections. Unscrew them all, lower two inches, accept that there are going to be visible screw holes on that section, and start re-screwing them in... oh wait, cordless screwdriver out of juice after two screws, so go grab drill and extention cord. Alright, now it's done. :-D Click the image if'n you want to see it a little bigger (708x532).


Comments:
why not add a few more feet to the fence and block out their sun altogether?

after that, put up fences on other sides of their home..

then comes the lid. caulk it to prevent leaking. on all sides.
 
I like your way of thinking. But instead of wood, I'd want to use acrylic so it'd be airtight too.
 
I'm so glad that you said "life could go on."
It would have been disastrous if putting in this fence would have killed you.
Seriously, the fence looks terrific!!
 
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