We have been enjoying our new fences for a month now, and do we ever enjoy them and the privacy they have provided us! The only problem is that when we were building it, our secondary fence that runs from the shed to the corner of our house seems to have bit the dust. It technically is still standing, but barely and only because it is propped up against itself. A few of the posts are actually completely broken off. A good windstorm may knock it over.

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With the new fence you may be wondering why we don’t just take the broken secondary fence out and extend our yard into that weird little run area. Good question. The reason is that the new fence runs up the side of our house, and then there is nothing closing in the yard. It just ends and we have a piece of plastic lattice somewhat blocking the end. That little broken secondary fence, keeps our dogs in the yard.

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My intention when we did the new fence was always to build a gate at the end. Our “final” plans did involve removing that secondary fence and adding another gate at the corner of the house to create a storage area along the side of the house and keep the dogs from running up to the front of the house. Where the secondary fence currently runs, we were going to utilize to extend the length of our future shed/chicken coop, and add in a chicken run. We may just need to do a few things out of the order we had originally planned, ending with the same final result.

I had ordered some extra wood when planning the fences, with the expected purpose of building a gate. I finally got around to building the gate a couple weeks ago, before the boat went into the shop. Unfortunately, it is still not hung, and is currently sitting in our rec-room, out of the way of lawn-mowing and landscaping activities. I swear that it will be hung soon, just the garden took over our time due to the time-sensitive nature of getting all the happy plants into the ground. We are now dealing with the new irrigation lines to the new beds…but once that is done, that gate is going to be hung!

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I also had some figuring out to do. The post for the gate had to be cemented in approx. 14″ from the side of the house as we have some irrigation lines that run underground along the side of the house. I needed to purchase a few brackets so that I could put a perpendicular 4″ x 4″ piece in to stabilize the post. With the weight of a 4.5′ gate, there is going to be more torque than the cemented post could likely handle, so attaching it to the corner of the house, will help provide extra strength to the post. It will also give us a surface area to add some slats of wood to close the gap between the post and the house to ensure no dogs can ever escape through that space.

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This time of year is always hustle and bustle with a lot of stuff that needs to get done. We always have some sort of build happening at the same time the garden is ready to get going, resulting in some projects sitting for a few weeks before being completed. Add to it that it is prime fishing season, and our time is stretched thin. But it all manages to get done eventually.

Next post, I will share how to build the gate to match the fence.