I had told Wife we would be changing the fence out and replacing it sometime this past year and dammit, we are more than halfway there. My neighbors to the right had mentioned it at one point and I said it would be great, then a couple months ago the man told me he had bought the material and he was going to do it with a friend, if I wanted to help cover the costs, maybe give him $250. I thought this was very nice of him and told him we would have loved to help but he decided they would do it during the week, and unfortunately, I work and the boys are busy with school and stuff. I gave him $300, knowing the material was more than $500, plus they were going to handle all the labor.
In the end, it all worked out, he had about 50 slats left over and told me we could have them, and at $3 a board, that was easily half what I had given him. Those slats had been sitting on our patio for about 3-4 weeks now, even with the rails to hold them, the 2x4 boards connected to the posts in the ground, which I had gone and bought at Lowe's a couple weeks ago. I would have started but the weather had been colder than normal since Thanksgiving, every time I was off from work.
Wife then pressured me to get it done this weekend, DD is off and the fence benefits his dog the most (stupid dog keeps finding/making holes in the fence because it is all old and dry). Today (Sunday), I got up early and told him I was planning on working on the fence, if he wasn't doing anything, it would be great if he helped. He said sure, which was more than Boy said. Boy looked at me with a straight face and said "no thanks, I am playing video games." I then yelled a little bit, not even looking at him yelling "you live here Fucker, you are helping." I then went to Lowe's and got about $650 worth of more runners and slats. The job was actually really easy because the posts in the ground are metal and we can reuse those.
Once we got everything home, we put it close to the back of the fence and the boys started taking the old fence down. It was a little tricky at first, trying to figure out the right sockets to use but then we got a flow going. Boy kept taking down sections of fence, I would help him drag them inside and away from where we were working. DD works with drills and screws for a living, so he did the assembling. I worked the saw and measured and cut the rails and put them up or held them for Boy to do it. Baby A was the muscle and he brought the rails over to my sawhorses and the slats for DD to install. I copied my neighbors idea to go from 2 runners to three and also to use screws to hold everything together instead of nails. It took a little longer, but the finished product is surely going to be stronger and last longer than the first one. The original fence lasted a good 13 years and the wood wasn't treated or anything special. This one is treated wood for the runners and cedar for the slats, it looks beautiful right now. We got about 60% done on Sunday, and I will try to get the last 4 sections done with Baby A by ourselves in the next two days. Wife said there is a cold front coming and I want to beat it because I am not working in the cold, it can wait.
After we are done with this, we will need to get the other side with my other neighbors, but that can wait a month or two. I need to talk to them and hopefully, they will want to split the cost. I don't mind doing the work, it was kind of fun being outside working with my boys, they were both involved and interested in being helpful. Boy did bump Baby A with a 2x4 in the head, but he seemed ok after, he just muttered "that should get me Whataburger for dinner, ouch."
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