Fence - Part 2

Until recently there has been no progress on the fence.

In case you missed the fence project and all the drama and lessons learned, check it out here, here and here.


I know, it's hard to believe there have been three other posts about my fence, and yet this post is called Part 2.  Yeah....it's been that kind of project. ;)


Last month I had a huge yard sale to raise funds for the rest of the fence panels. And it was such a success I was even able to get the pergola I wanted!!!  Unfortunately, it needed to be assembled.  Every. Single. Little. Bitty. Piece!!!


So everything has sat for the last several weeks.  BUT...last weekend while I was at my booth doing some tweaking, my ex-husband and my Doodle assembled my pergola!! Talk about a surprise!  


And it is GORGEOUS!!

You may be wondering why I chose a wood pergola when I have a vinyl fence.  Well, one, it was cheaper than a vinyl one.  This cost $189 on sale at Menards.  The vinyl pergolas started around $300.  But more importantly, this one is GORGEOUS (did I mention that?)!  All the vinyl ones I looked at were very plain...nothing special.


I plan to paint this white to match the fence.   

Once I get this painted...once I get the money to buy paint, LOL...then I can finally get the picket fence installed on either side of the pergola. 


Of course, the pergola will be centered, it's not it's proper place at the moment...but this is progress for sure! :)

And you've probably forgotten (how dare you, LOL)  but I was working on this paver border earlier in the spring.  I finally finished it!  Well, I finished it up to as much as I planned to do this year....where the picket fence will be installed.  I'll pick it up again next spring.  This is what it looked like last time you saw it.

And here is what it looks like now.

It took me for.ev.er to complete.

Not so much because it was hard, because it really wasn't.  It was somewhat time consuming, but not hard.  No, it took forever because we've had a VERY hot summer!   I'm not a big fan of H O T.  So, I stopped working outside during the dog days of summer recently.  But I finally pushed through and got it done a few weeks ago.

I mostly used plants I already had by moving them from other, not so clean, locations.  Or finally planting potted plants in the ground!  Can you believe I had a catmint plant that lasted two years in the pot I bought it in! 

I do need to put more sand in the "joints" and put some topsoil and grass seed in the areas I overshot when I was cutting the beds out with my spade.


I guess thinking I'm "done" is overrated. LOL


But considering when I bought this house two and half years ago the only landscaping were the boxwoods and white rocks...I'm pretty pleased with my progress....and so are my neighbors.

Hopefully I can show the final fence photos soon. But for now, I am completely in love with my pergola...and my finished border project! :)

Recycled Yard Art

The first Saturday of every month, our Goodwill has everything for half off.

Since I couldn't find any yard sales this weekend, I popped over for the big sale and picked up a bunch of random glass pieces.

Let's take a step back...there is a booth at The Emporium, where my booth is, that has a few if these really awesome yard art sculptures made from recycled glass pieces.

I always stop by and stare at them! They charge $15 each, which I think is completely reasonable...I just haven't been able to afford that right now.

So.....when I was at the Goodwill it occurred to me that I could make one or two myself and save some money.  I already had the glass glue on hand.

The best part of all this, Doodle actually was excited to help!!!!!  As any tween girl's mom knows....this is a HUGE deal! ;)

So, we grabbed pieces like this old light shade....

and little juice glasses....

And some colored glass, that ironically was a bonus!  I was just buying the container...had no idea we'd end up using the beads inside! :)

And this is what we ended up with!  This one is mine....

And here is the Doodle's....

How stinkin' cute are these?!?  We are both pretty proud of how these turned out.

They sparkle so pretty in the garden!

You can insert a wooden dowel into the ground and into the vase portion for stability if you need to.

I'm not actually displaying them together like this, I plan to spread them out...but I wanted to get a shot of them outside to show them side by side.

Of course, the price is dependent on your glassware choices. These came in at around $3 each.  Not bad, huh?


I'll be posting this project at these linky parties! :)

 

Vinyl Fence - Lessons Learned

I am SOOOO loving my new fence!!  Privacy is a wonderful thing. :)

But as with all projects here at Where Beauty Meets Function....things didn't quite go as planned.

If you missed the first fence post about all the drama of just getting the right materials, read this post first before you read "Lessons Learned".

I was asked where I purchased my fence.  I purchased it at Lowe's.  Earlier in the spring they were having a very nice sale on their vinyl panels.  They are usually $44 a panel, but with the sale I got them at $29 a panel!  That's $270 in savings on the panels!  

What I didn't account for was just how expensive everything else was!!!

The vinyl post cover sleeves were $28 EACH! Did you know that??  I sure didn't before I started this project!  The screws were $6 A BAG (which I needed about 10 bags when all was said and done!) or the brackets for $2 EACH (you need four brackets per panel - except end posts where you only need two) or the treated wood posts that go inside the sleeve cover ($7 EACH)!  Oh, and let's not forget a bag of concrete for each post at about $3.50 a bag and caps for $2 EACH.  

Suddenly my $25 panels weren't so cheap after all when you add almost $45 for EACH post!!!

I needed 18 panels to do my yard!  

I haven't done a final calculation on my fence, but I have estimated it has costs me about $1500...so far.  

I've not included the cost for the picket portion yet or the gate on the other side of the house.  So, I should be around $2000 when all is said and done.

I HIGHLY recommend going to Lowe's.com/videos if you are looking to install a fence on your own.  This was a GREAT resource.  I will definitely use it again in the future for other projects!!  

So, now let's discuss the lessons I learned about installing a vinyl fence.

This is probably the biggest lesson of all that I learned.  

Are you ready?

HIRE SOMEONE!!

I'm joking.  Sort of. ;)

First Lesson - Have ALL of your materials on hand before you start!  We wasted a lot of time having to run back and forth to Lowe's because I didn't have everything on hand at one time (posts and screws).

Second Lesson - Inspect all of your panels and post covers before you leave the store!  When we started pulling panels out of the shed, some of them were cracked or had huge staples right through the panel.  So, we had to do some exchanging...which also wasted a lot of time.

Third Lesson - RENT A POWERED POST HOLE DIGGER!!!  I offered many times, but my ex kept saying no, he could do it the manual way.  We wasted a lot of time the first two days because he was being stubborn (and trying to save me money).  He finally broke down and let me rent one Monday afternoon.  For $58 we got it from 3:00 pm to 9:30 the following morning.  I cannot tell you how fast the process went once we rented the power digger.  It was absolutely worth a full day's rental cost (which was around $80 I believe.)

Fourth Lesson - Rent a digger with reverse or have a wrench on hand!  We got it wrapped around tree roots on the very first hole!  Since our auger didn't have reverse we couldn't get it to unwrap from the roots.  A call to the rental company revealed a wrench would give my ex the power to reverse it by hand and untangle the auger. It worked perfectly!  And we didn't run into anymore root trouble after that.  But just in case you do...now you know how to undo it.

My ex trying to use a car jack to get the auger unstuck!  It didn't work.

Fifth Lesson -  Build the ground up to your fence!  Let me explain this. 

It was important to me that the top of my fence was level.  But my yard has a slope...not a major one, but when I came to installing a fence it sure felt major.  We could have done a "stair step" method to work with my slope, but I know me and I would not have been happy with this.  Stair stepping would have been fine if I had a large slope, but mine is so minor, a stair step would have looked silly in my opinion.

The options were...to start at the high point and have a huge gap between the ground and the fence in the low spots.  Or the opposite...dig a "trench" for some of the panels in the high spots, but have a normal gap in the low spots.

My ex opted for option #2.  It was the wrong choice because it created A LOT of extra work having to dig trenches!  And it made the fence appear shorter in some spots.

After the fact, we decided that it would have best to create a gap at the highest point and then just bring in dirt to build up the ground to panels that had large gaps.  Lesson learned.

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Those were the lessons we learned the hard way unfortunately.  

We both agreed after figuring all this out, we wouldn't be afraid to do another fence again.  We'd just make different choices to make it easier next time.

Some tips:

- Get one of these levels that wrap around the post!  It was the best $5 I ever spent!! 

- Since the vinyl fence panel tops aren't perfectly level, there is some slope to them, you can't measure the level from the top of the panel.  So have a piece of wood that will fit from post top to post top that you can put your straight level on to make sure your posts are level before pouring concrete.

- As recommended in the Lowe's video, we installed each panel as we went.  The alternative is to dig all the holes and posts, then install the panels, which will work fine for a wood fence, because you can self correct any mistakes easier.  But for vinyl, you have to be pretty exact, so this creates a VERY high error rate.  And once the concrete is set, you can't do much to change it.  We already had the panels sitting in the brackets when were getting ready to pour concrete for our next post.  Then I'd screw them in after the post had set.  We did not have any issues with the concrete being too soft of moving...just in case you were wondering.  It was clear out spacing was right because the panel was already in place!!  

*********************

I think that's about it!  It was VERY hard work!  I will not lie.  Probably, no definitely, the hardest DIY I've ever done!  But ABSOLUTELY worth it in the end!  

If you decide to tackle a fence on your own, feel free to ask me any questions! I'd be more than happy to give you my take or discuss problems,etc! 

I hope you all have a WONDERFUL weekend!! :)

I'm SO Excited!

You will never believe what has happened around here the last few days!

Remember this post from several years ago?  Fencing Drama.

Oh wait!  No, it only FELT like years ago.  ;)

After almost three months of tripping over 18 fence panels, 18 bags of concrete, fence posts, fence post covers, caps, screws, brackets, the lawn mower in the garage....it is DONE!!!

OH YEAH!!! :)

Ok, maybe not done, done.  But the privacy fence portion is done. And let me tell you....that is HUGE!! :)

I owe a HUGE, MEGA - THANK YOU - to my ex-husband!!  Seriously he worked so hard for three days during his vacation time to help me install this fence!  

Instead of fully enclosing the yard in a privacy fence.  I have opted to install pickets along the front side.  (And hopefully a trellis with gate here as well.)  But that will have to wait for me to find more funds.  I'm sure you understand. ;)

At least in the mean time, I no longer have to look out my kitchen window or sit in my back yard to see this lovely view.  

The abandoned house that has sit there for 2 and half years empty and unclaimed by a bank/person/city or anyone else who should take responsibility for mowing it and spraying the carpenter bees or any other type of maintenance. :(

I had to trim the tree along the backside.  It looks kind of strange now, so some trimming is definitely in the works.  And excuse the work station table randomly sitting in the yard.  I was SOOO stinkin' excited about getting the fence up I couldn't wait to post about it! 

I can't see a soul from most of the yard now!  And they can't see me either!

So.......you know what that means, right?

Yep, I can lay out in the nude now!

I'm JOKING! LOL

No...it means I can start thinking about borders and plants and flowers!!  Adding a tree.  A patio.  A garden path (even though my yard isn't that big).  All the fun stuff. (No, all of this will NOT take place this year, but a girl has to start somewhere.) 

WOW!  I'm exhausted, and excited, just thinking about it! :)

Do you think I can do anything about my neighbors crooked mailbox that has to sit on my side of the street?

Anywho....I will post "Lessons Learned" later this week for anyone who is crazy enough to consider installing a fence themselves. :)

Where Am I?

Wanna know where I've been lately and why my blog posts are so few and far between.

This is where I've been....

On my porch!!

Reclining in my outdoor Lazy Boy recliners (purchased at KMart)!

Planting new flowers, like my pink Lillies, in my border and moving others around, like my Day Lillies and my now dormant Daffodil.

Threading a bazillion straight pins in my little Better Homes and Gardens flag from Walmart. 

Yes, that's what I said, no need to reread.  LOL  Someone thought it was cute to steal my spring flag.  So, I thought grabbing my flag at night, full of straight pins would be fun too!  Yes I am crazy like that.  LOL  Don't steal from me and no one gets hurt. ;) 

Basically, I've been busy taking my home from looking like this when I bought it 2 years ago...

To this last summer....

To this so far this spring....

Basicallly...I've been busy people. :)

I've been taking this border which would never stay in place....

And have been putting in a paver border instead.

So, that's where I've been.

I hope you understand.

After a long, hot day, working in the sun...my porch calls to me to come sit and relax. :)

Pretty much, this sleeping face says it all. :)

Until next time,
Erin