Our New Fence

We love this house and everything about it! Now the yard is another story. The back part that is fenced in is small and the girls love being with us when we are doing yard work. But as many of you know we have a 2 year old. And she is a runner! if she gets out of the house she runs for it and more then once she has left the yard for the neighbors or the street!! So, we decided to put up a fence to not only beautify our yard and bring more value to our home, but to keep miss "I-love-to-run" safe! Here is the before picture. The mess on the sidewalk is the moss I scraped up. I didn't know the sidewalk was so big until I did that! I also had to really trim back the bushes to make way for the fence. It was brutal but Jacob says it will grow back. I sure hope he is right!!



Before Front view







Before Side View



It was kind of a whirlwind week getting it all done. On Wednesday we went to the home depot store to get all of the supplies. On Thursday, we dug all the post holes, set and braced the posts and cemented some of them. On Friday we cemented the rest of them (27 in all!!) and hung some of the rails (stringers, in fence building talk) On Saturday we nailed up the pickets. We ran out of pickets so on Monday we had to get more. On Tuesday we installed the hardware, latches, handles that kind of thing.

cement set and stringers ready to get screwed on



After back/side view

  And ta-da! It looks amazing! I still can't believe we did it! My joints do however! Man that was a lot of work but so worth it!


After side view

  I love taking pictures of the house at this angle. Front view shots make it look so small but this angle you can see the HUGE addition in the back.


After Front View

 Here is the front view. The arbor in the walkway was a custom build but us. We designed it and put it together. It cost us 65 dollars in supplies to make it. It is 8 feet tall (before it was installed in the post holes) 5 feet 7 inches wide and 3 feet deep. to buy an arbor that size at home depot was easily 500 to 600 dollars. Huge savings by doing it ourselves. When the wood has a chance to dry out we are going to paint the fence white along with the pillars on the porch. I do not like them green. In fact I do not like the green trim at all!! Not this year but hopefully next year I want to paint them cream. i think it will go much better with the roof we had put on last summer. I love that we have a new fence. I love that it will keep my babies safe.

taking a Popsicle break!

They love being outside with us and getting dirty in the garden. With the price of food lately we are planting  HUGE garden. So hopefully we will have many fun times ahead in our yard.