In the summer of 2019, my wife Melissa and I decided to replace our fence with one we would design and build ourselves. It was no small task to take on since we had a little over 200’ of fence to replace! But the old fence was practically falling apart in some areas, so it was a necessity and we wanted to do it on a budget.
We wanted something that looked modern, so we started sketching out what the fence would look like. We settled on a horizontal board design with boards of alternating width (4” then 2” then 4” and so forth with a couple inches separating them) and a flat 2x6 on top to form a sort of railing that one could rest one’s elbows on.
We chose cedar wood since it is said to be one of the most durable types of wood and it is less liable to shrinkage, etc. We bought the wood from Medford Cedar. It was easy to work with them to get cedar boards cut to the size we wanted and to be milled where necessary. We were very excited to get the wood delivered after a few weeks!
(In the picture above, you can see the old picket fence.)
Below I show a lot of pictures from building, which took over 2 months. We built it in sections, ripping out the old and replacing with new and staining the fence as we went along. It was extremely hard work removing the old fence, harder even than I anticipated. Actually, removing the fence itself was not so hard. Rather, 90% of the work was in removing the fence posts since they were set in concrete several feet below the ground. In some cases, the wood had rotted so much that one could simply shimmy the post out of the concrete base and then dig out the concrete or even reuse it in a few cases. But some were a lot more stubborn. In fact, I went out and bought a small jackhammer to help! (It was only $130, which was slightly less than the price of renting one two times.)
It was a lot of work but we think it really paid off in the end. All in all, it cost about $2500 and, with some continuing maintenance (extra coats of stain), it has held up extremely well. We have gotten a ton of compliments from neighbors. Some that we hadn’t met yet actually referred to us the “fence people” later when it came up in conversation!
Addendum #1: In 2020, we decided to replace part of the existing structure at the back entrance. (This was part of the old fence that we had not replaced, actually, since the bulk of it had clearly been installed some time after the main fence). The entrance had a wooden arch that had decayed so much that it was falling apart over our heads! We sketched a diagram for a replacement pergola design and I set to work building something that would be a literal drop-in replacement. Below are the pictures!
Addendum #2: In 2022, after we decided to demolish our shed and get a new one, we took the opportunity to demolish an old stretch of fence separating the shed from a driveway running between the houses on our block. We wanted to install a gate at the edge of the shed so that we could enter/exit our property directly from the driveway. (We also put doors on both sides of the shed, so that we could walk through the shed directly out into the driveway.) So, we designed a simple gate and made use of some spare sheets of faux ivy screen. We wanted something that looked modern and unique, similar in some ways to the fence. On the driveway side of our property, we have a bunch of hedges that we wanted to keep, so we hit upon the idea of replacing the gnarled old fence with sheets of faux ivy to retain some of the privacy the old fence gave us. First, we installed a post. Then, we constructed the new gate and attached it to the post and directly to the edge of the shed.
