Haulin'

Over the weekend, our friend Jess was kind enough to lend us the use of the back of her pickup truck. We made our [weekly] trip to the Home Depot and utilized the truck to bring home 2 sections of wooden privacy fence (pre-treated), 4 posts, 6 bags of cement, and a gate kit. It's enough to close up the 14 ft gap on the side of the house where we took down the chain link fence. To eventually do the other side, we'll have to buy a driveway gate kit, 2 more fence sections, 3 more bags of cement and 2 more posts. But we want to take this one side at a time.

We also need to choose a finish. Do we choose clear and leave the fence natural or go with a stain? What would look best with our yellow siding (which isn't going to be changed anytime soon)? The mahogany on the porch will probably be returned to its natural dark color, but next door our neighbors put up a cedar fence with a cedar stain that matches their cedar siding, so do we try to blend with them? We also want to try to coordinate with the neighbors on the other side, who want to put up a privacy fence in the spring, so that our fence blends with theirs as well.

In our town you don't need a permit to install a 6 ft tall fence, but you do have to comply with the "call before you dig" law. I wish I had known about that before we illegally planted the trees in the yard... but we didn't hit anything so no harm no foul. "Call before you dig" is a free but required service where the gas and water companies come out and mark the lines in the yard before we dig anywhere on the property - even if the digging happens in the backyard and the lines are in the front. We are glad to know where the lines are for future reference... and who doesn't love to have their grass spray painted with yellow and blue stripes?