When we purchased this place, we knew the previous owners had it on the market in 2012 and again for most of 2013. It failed to sell, and we’re pretty certain they took out a small mortgage to redo the kitchen and bathrooms. They splashed fresh paint inside the house, taking it from a lovely bright white to puke-brown.
They also splashed paint on the fences, but avoided doing any sort of repairs or post/board replacements. So tidying up our fences was on my list, and in spring 2018 we started working on them.
First was the small project to extend the fence along the west side of the driveway. We know from satellite imagery that up to around 2014, the fence extended almost the entire length of the driveway up to the non-motorized house yard gates. You can see it in the image below–the white line that parallels the driveway coming in from the left (north) side of the image.
Why the previous owners got rid of half the fence we will never know. But the lack of fence there meant we often had idiots who’d drive down our driveway, realize they’re not where they were meant to be, and attempt to turn around–more often than not driving off the asphalt and making a mess. So after three years here, and since I was already planning out the project to address the dry rot in the main house yard fence, we thought it would be a good idea to extend the fence. Below are pics before the extension, right after it was done, and as of the writing of this post.
Once that was done, we moved on to replacing some of the rotted fence posts and rails. (The house yard fence consists of railroad tie for posts, 2×6 boards as rails, and wire mesh across everything.) I worked with our gardeners for this part of the project and we reused about a dozen of the railroad ties set aside after the Great Wall project. I hopped into the excavator and used the thumb and bucket to pull out the rotted posts, then attached the large auger to get holes for the new posts just right. We only had to replace about a dozen posts and were done within just a couple of hours.
Then the gardener and his helpers got busy replacing all the boards that were in nasty shape, and doing some much-needed repair work on the house yard gate.
After the boards were all sound, our favorite painter, Humberto, arrived. He and his brother pressure-washed everything, found a few more rotten boards which the gardener had to come back and replace. Humberto also had me order a lot of primer and paint from the local Sherwin-Williams which, once delivered, enabled him and his brother to get to work.
Soon all the fences were sound, sealed and very white again. The various gates were rehung and everything still looks so much more put-together.
