fence meets fence

 That means the fence is done.  You have no idea how nice it is to say that.

We have a few little things left to do before we can walk away from the fence, however.  We need to fill the post holes with dirt, now that the concrete has had plenty of time to set, and trim the top of the posts shorter than the fence panels.  As well as finish our neighbor's side fence and gate.  But the 96' length of the fence is complete.  And that's huge.

A few issues that we ran into while putting up the fence:

The person(s) that installed the sprinkler system, ran the sprinkler pipes right along the fence line.  This made it difficult to use the auger and for straightening out the line of the fence.  We ended up cutting the pipe and installing a sprinkler head on the second half of the yard.  Now the pipe wouldn't be in our way for the rest of the fence, and that half of the yard would now get the water that it wasn't getting before.  Win-win.

Renting the auger for just 2 days wasn't nearly long enough.  It would have been nice to have it for the length of time it took us to complete the fence.  But that would have cost us way too much money.

We measured, but we should have measured a heck of a lot more.  For over half of the 'augered' holes that were drilled, we had to use post hole diggers to widen the hole for proper fence hole spacing.  Pain in the butt. 

The pre-existing fence line was riddled with bricks, pavers, and metal flashing.  We had to pull all of that out to straighten up the fence line.  This is just some of it.

More of it.  "The brick graveyard", on the side of the garage.

These are the bricks we chose to keep.  They were the ones buried along the old fence.  They would be great for a future firepit.  They're worn and weathered.  Just the way I like them.

Upgraded from...

{ you can see more of the old fence HERE }

...to this.

There are some "wonky" panels, a few less than plumb posts, and a few posts that are out of line, but all in all, I think we did a pretty good job.  Especially for our first time!  We would have preferred the wider fence pickets (like the old fence), but those were special order and significantly more money.  We may have settled, but we still got an improvement.

But here are a few tips, if you ever decide to install a fence of your own.  We learned a lot from this fence install.

1) Do it in cooler weather.  Putting up a fence in 100+ degree weather is miserable.

2) Measure, measure, measure!  You'll avoid a huge headache if you measure out the wa-zoo.

3) Rent an auger.  It makes hole digging 100x easier...as long as you measure properly.

4) Pre-made fence panels are far from perfect.  Build your own.  Hindsight.  We should have built our own.

5) You'll need more concrete than you initially thought.  Most likely.

6) Hire a professional.  Especially if you want a professional looking fence.