Building Our Fence

Greg and I have wanted a fence since the day that we moved in.  Well, maybe I wanted a fence a little more than Greg because I am the one who typically gets up before him in the morning and home from work before him, so I am the one who is typically letting Abby out.  Even though we would like to think Abby is a well-behaved dog, it would be so nice not to have to watch her in the backyard or use her electric collar all the time.

Both of our neighbors have fences; one has wood and the other has black aluminum.  We decided to go with the black aluminum because we didn't want the maintenance of a wood fence.  We had a couple companies give us quotes for the back and two front sides, and it was way more than what we thought it would cost, so Greg went to Lowes and purchased the material and decided to install it himself.

The fence material was delivered on a Friday in a nice, little box that they set on our back porch.  We had plans to work on it the entire weekend, and hopefully knock it out in a couple days.

We started on Saturday having Greg cut off another row of limbs from the trees in our backyard as I picked up pine cones and dug up all of our dead plants and pulled weeds.  Jeremy showed up early in the afternoon and he and Greg went to go pick up an auger that we rented. Greg mapped out the holes that he had to dig, and they got to it.  The ground was so dry from the drought this summer, that we had to soak many of them just to get to the 2' depth that was needed.  Then, there were areas with clay dirt that wouldn't soak in the water and would be close to impossible to pull up the auger from out of the ground.  That's where I had to jump in to help the boys.

Both of them ended up with bruises on their thighs from supporting the arms of the auger.

Needless to say, they were pretty tired...

It was a long day to say the least, and Greg woke up showing flu-like symptoms the next day.  I forced him out of bed and told him to get back to it!  We were both so sick that following week from the allergies of being outdoors.  Greg could barely breathed from being so stuffed up at night, and I was running a fever for a few days.  We decided to give it a break for a while.

Every time Greg would work on the fence he would always bring out all of his tools and set the fence parts across the yard, and then typically only get to one section.  So, at the end of the day, we would spend so much time just picking up all the parts and pieces and setting them up closer to the house.  I finally convinced him this was not productive.

Greg would be working until 9:30pm some evenings.

Greg worked on the fence by himself most of the time and had help from his friend, Derek, a few times and eventually the fence was finished.  It took around 6 weeks to complete at our own pace and overall it saved around $1,200.  Greg thinks it was worth it and has the motivation to do our own sprinkler system.
 
Overall, the fence looks wonderful.  Abby is getting used to it, but she still is so used to being let out to do her business and come back inside, so she often just sits on the steps at our back door and watches the outdoors.