I finally started another house project. Only took me two years, but this time it's not me having to do all the physical labor! Our fence has been in need of repair for a while.
Tate and Diesel are rough on it, they bounce off of it barking when they hear another dog or the garbage truck. Oh and they also love to dig under it and try to escape. They taunt and tease the dog that lives next door, (also the neighbors that live there). So with big missing slats, nails sticking out everywhere, and rotted away wood we decided it was time. We had been punishing our neighbors enough!
Several fence quotes later, which varied sometimes as much as $4,000, we finally decided. We met with the landscaper and he wanted to get started the very next day... Which didnt leave us much time to talk to our neighbors that we share one side of the fence with. We wanted to make them aware that we were going to be tearing that fence down and we also wanted to try to talk them into sharing the cost of that portion with us. It only seemed fair since they get the benefit of using it too, right? What do you think?
The Lean: The Oleander has gotten so big that its pushing out the fence. (In the alley that's how we find our house though! The fence thats leaning out is how we know it's ours!)
Pretty rough looking and damaged.
The railroad ties retaining wall is falling apart and spewing these mystery bricks. The bricks were left by the previous owners I'm guessing and were now falling out of the backyard thanks to the dogs digging.
One culprit caught on film: The Oleander
(If you look close enough you can see our neighbors nice new-ish fence in the background, they must hate their view out of their back gate.)
The posts are old oil pipes. All of our neighbors had these crazy stories to tell us about the original owner of the house, Robert. Who sounds like he's a quirkey character. He installed the fence himself and salvaged these old, eight to ten foot, oil pipes from a junkyard twenty-something years ago. He sunk them in the ground four feet with cement and then cut them all to size. The neighbors told us that Robert told them all that the oil pipe posts would not rust, well he lied.
Our landscaper was shocked and surprised at the sight of those things and told us he had never seen anything like those old "fence" posts before, he wanted to replace them with new treated steel for a better look....Little did he know that they were sunk in the ground four feet with cement. I kept that part to myself.
So stay tuned for the before and after shots of our old oil pipe fence! Oh and incase you were wondering... Our neighbors agreed to help us pay for the shared portion of the fence! We are lucky duckys!
