Fencing
Way back when we had a retaining wall installed on the back side of our house, the people who did the work needed to take down the fence in order to get their equipment into the backyard. For whatever reason, the fence never got up back up and was left in place in pieces. Years passed (not kidding).
Recently, my wife decided that she wanted some barrier in place to keep Oliver from running out to the alley. And so began the saga of the New Fence. The first episode consisted of getting several preconstructed fence panels and posts from Home Depot and hauling them home. In case you are curious, they are in fact quite heavy. My wife and I lugged them home strapped to the roof rack of my mother-in-law's minivan. Does anyone else feel like an idiot whenever they are a hauling around something strapped to their roof?
The second episode was the attempted removal of the existing fence. The removal took a long time in part because a weed had grown through the fence links and become so big that it actually had bark. We've managed to remove most of the above ground part and with wire snips were able to cut off the fence links that are now part of the plant. I'm calling this the attempted removal of the existing fence because we had so much trouble removing one of the fence posts that we decided to use it for the new fence. After all, it is clearly not going anywhere.
But why is it not going anywhere you ask? That is the part of the trilogy of unfortunate events that brings our story to a screeching halt. Our original plan was to put the fence at the edge of the alley. But when we started digging, we found a metal plate about three inches down. Fearing that it was covering some sort of utility lines, we suspended digging until DigRite got back to us. A couple of days later and an all-clear signal from the utilities, we started going again and managed to unearth one mother of a 1/4 inch thick, 8 feet tall, 2 feet wide steel plate. After hauling it out of the way I started digging a hole in the middle of the stretch where we wanted to put the fence. Eight inches down I ran into another sizable stretch of concrete. I tried digging in another spot and came across another sizable chunk of concrete. When I tried to unearth the fence post, I found it was squeezed between two sizable chunks of concrete. At that I decided that I'd had enough of sizable chunks of concrete and called it a day.
So at this point, we still need to remove the tree/weed and will likely have to dig through a sizable chunk of concrete in order to place the other fence post. ARGH!
Recently, my wife decided that she wanted some barrier in place to keep Oliver from running out to the alley. And so began the saga of the New Fence. The first episode consisted of getting several preconstructed fence panels and posts from Home Depot and hauling them home. In case you are curious, they are in fact quite heavy. My wife and I lugged them home strapped to the roof rack of my mother-in-law's minivan. Does anyone else feel like an idiot whenever they are a hauling around something strapped to their roof?
The second episode was the attempted removal of the existing fence. The removal took a long time in part because a weed had grown through the fence links and become so big that it actually had bark. We've managed to remove most of the above ground part and with wire snips were able to cut off the fence links that are now part of the plant. I'm calling this the attempted removal of the existing fence because we had so much trouble removing one of the fence posts that we decided to use it for the new fence. After all, it is clearly not going anywhere.
But why is it not going anywhere you ask? That is the part of the trilogy of unfortunate events that brings our story to a screeching halt. Our original plan was to put the fence at the edge of the alley. But when we started digging, we found a metal plate about three inches down. Fearing that it was covering some sort of utility lines, we suspended digging until DigRite got back to us. A couple of days later and an all-clear signal from the utilities, we started going again and managed to unearth one mother of a 1/4 inch thick, 8 feet tall, 2 feet wide steel plate. After hauling it out of the way I started digging a hole in the middle of the stretch where we wanted to put the fence. Eight inches down I ran into another sizable stretch of concrete. I tried digging in another spot and came across another sizable chunk of concrete. When I tried to unearth the fence post, I found it was squeezed between two sizable chunks of concrete. At that I decided that I'd had enough of sizable chunks of concrete and called it a day.
So at this point, we still need to remove the tree/weed and will likely have to dig through a sizable chunk of concrete in order to place the other fence post. ARGH!
posted by mypetrock at 1:32 PM
1 Comments:
Ambitious projects are fun. Short-sighted and masochistic, but fun. The more things you do that require you to put in 3 hours of labor for every $5 in materials you spend, you begin to understand why people actually pay folks to do things for them.
Good luck with the fence. And you don't have to explain how years pass in between planning and execution to any of those who own a house. I've had a bathroom wall by one of our tubs broken down but not rebuilt for oh...going on 2 years now...it's both comical, and sad...but mostly sad. On the other hand, I got a plaque from my local Lazy Husband's Association chapter. So I got that going for me...which is nice.
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