It’s been almost as long since I last posted. The house is new in a new neighbourhood & came with a lovely back yard. The yard backs onto a small belt of “green” land about 30 feet wide that separates us from the houses behind. When we moved in the yard was completely open to the surrounding area including the green belt and the neighbours’ yards.
Since we wanted to get a dog before the end of the year & also desired additional privacy and security, we decided it was time to plan a fence build. Being handy I couldn’t imagine paying someone else to do it, and seeing as we are not rolling in cash & especially weren’t at the time, DIY was the smart economical choice as well.
The first problem was there were several very tall and very dead trees in the back of the yard. Two of them who shared some roots were right in the corner of our property on one corner – blocking the corner.
If we left them they would have come down eventually in a wind storm. And they could’ve reached our house & destroyed part of whatever fence we put up. Some enthusiastic family friends who enjoy that sort of thing made short work of the lumber.
In retrospect I probably should have gotten rid of the stumps in the lot corner, but at the time I felt the job was too big so we planned around them instead. Perhaps one day I’ll change that.
With that out of the way we had our canvas for the artistic work that is joining bits of wood together to produce something practical and visually appealing.
After some measuring and sketching and standing around while the brain gears slowly turned, we had our plan and ordered some items.
Then came the digging. This ended up taking the longest time for one simple, uncooperative reason: rocks. Our land is full of rocks of all shapes and sizes.
We started with one hole, as you do, and had friends and family come over on the weekend to help. We ended up with about 5 or 6 started holes that we would jump back and forth on as we got frustrated or made progress with the one we were working on. 
Sometimes the rocks were bigger than the holes we had to remove them from. Eventually we started getting posts set in concrete – the first time it started to hint that it was on its way to completion!
Still: more holes, more digging, more rocks. Some far too large for one person!
There was simply no escaping them. After almost four weeks of digging and excavating all by hand, all by between 1 and 4 people depending on the day of the week, we got the digging done and set all the posts. 
Before we knew it we had rails on and the boards were going up super fast. And a good thing too, because due to unforeseen circumstances the puppy we had chosen had to be picked up two weeks earlier than planned.
In a flurry of activity I got all the boards up & made temporary 3-foot high barricades to enclose the yard for the dog. One Friday night I put up boards until it was too dark to see and then got up before Saturday’s dawn broke to finish.
Yes, the boards are all screwed in. Not a nail in sight. I got done, changed my clothes, got in the car and drove two hours to pick up the new puppy. No rest for the wicked!
It didn’t help that the schedule change also meant we were dog-sitting an adult dog while family was away. We had a dog to mind, a puppy to nurture, two cats to visit & feed and the fence to work on. It’s amazing that we got it as far as it did in that time, which was about a week. After that, however, we had a severe life distraction:
After we’d had puppy dearest for a month, I finally got around to finishing the holes for one side gate, setting those posts and trimming the tops of the other posts.
You can see the wonky nature of the board placement – something I later adjusted. Two weeks after that I managed to find some time to build the gate itself.
I’ll add an “it’s complete” picture this evening.
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