shadesofmauve (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shadesofmauve) wrote2013-05-12 09:45 am
shadesofmauve) wrote2013-05-12 09:45 am
Fence madness!
I spent last weekend and yesterday helping my neighbor with our fence.
I haven't been talking about it much here because the project is her baby, which means she gets to angst about it and I just offer occasional opinions and reassurance and build things. It's been fantastic -- visible progress, discovering I work quite well with my neighbor, a bit of learn-as-I-go that helped boost my confidence for my own upcoming projects, too.
The only downside is that the part of the fence we're replacing was the best part of my ramshackle fence. As in, "Not currently falling over." My property is on the middle of the block, and the lots are platted a bit oddly in this neighborhood, so I share fence line with six different people -- and Michelle is the only one* eager to fix up her place and invest time and money.
ANYWAY! Here an old picture of my south fence line, taken not long after I bought the house:
We replaced everything from that patch of ivy to the left.
And here's some of the (still unfinished) new bit (click for bigger image):
And the new bits in the front:
The low section of cedar in the front will have 16" of hogwire at the top, to help marry the rear cedar section with the front wire section.
Michelle used to work in construction, and one of her construction friends helped out with setting some of the posts last Saturday. She and I finished the rest Sunday, and went to town yesterday. Lots of fun!
*Okay, there's one neighbor whom I've never talked to, but our shared fence is only about six feet. Otherwise we've got Michelle and I's other joint neighbor, who's an absentee slum lord who doesn't answer his phone; George in back, who's totally sweet and willing to work but has no money and is living in a house owned by his mom, who doesn't want to pay anything; and the asshole Narsty Neighbor to the north. Slumlord and Narsty's fence bits actually ARE falling down. I've got Slumlord's braced with 4 by 4.
I haven't been talking about it much here because the project is her baby, which means she gets to angst about it and I just offer occasional opinions and reassurance and build things. It's been fantastic -- visible progress, discovering I work quite well with my neighbor, a bit of learn-as-I-go that helped boost my confidence for my own upcoming projects, too.
The only downside is that the part of the fence we're replacing was the best part of my ramshackle fence. As in, "Not currently falling over." My property is on the middle of the block, and the lots are platted a bit oddly in this neighborhood, so I share fence line with six different people -- and Michelle is the only one* eager to fix up her place and invest time and money.
ANYWAY! Here an old picture of my south fence line, taken not long after I bought the house:
We replaced everything from that patch of ivy to the left.
And here's some of the (still unfinished) new bit (click for bigger image):
And the new bits in the front:
The low section of cedar in the front will have 16" of hogwire at the top, to help marry the rear cedar section with the front wire section.
Michelle used to work in construction, and one of her construction friends helped out with setting some of the posts last Saturday. She and I finished the rest Sunday, and went to town yesterday. Lots of fun!
*Okay, there's one neighbor whom I've never talked to, but our shared fence is only about six feet. Otherwise we've got Michelle and I's other joint neighbor, who's an absentee slum lord who doesn't answer his phone; George in back, who's totally sweet and willing to work but has no money and is living in a house owned by his mom, who doesn't want to pay anything; and the asshole Narsty Neighbor to the north. Slumlord and Narsty's fence bits actually ARE falling down. I've got Slumlord's braced with 4 by 4.
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Go to maps.google.co.nz and enter 1258 Fergusson Drive, Upper Hutt, then notice that his drive goes down to Fergusson Drive.Street View doesn't get anywhere near his place!
We recently fenced part of our property after being burgled - not a cheap thing to do...
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Sorry to hear about the burglary. That's a truly awful feeling -- we were burgled once when I was still living with my folks, and knowing someone else was in your home is really creepy, even if they don't take much (and they mostly took items with irreplaceable sentimental value, grrrr).
Fencing is shockingly expensive. I'd love to do the rest of mine, because I think our new stuff looks great, but materials for this 60' section cost over $900, so I'd really need my neighbors to help out! I have about 240' of old fence, still -- and that's on a city lot, not a big country one (am I correct in remembering that you have quite a big lot?).
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I don't have the numbers to hand, but IIRC we paid about NZD6k for material and labour for about 60 metres of fence. It is all timber (like yours) and about 1.8m high. I'll try to post some photos on FB if I can put my hands on ones we have taken. We also have 30 or 40 m3 of decking to rip up and replace once the bills for the the current work have been paid...
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(BTW, I use feet because it's standard here so it's how we figure things, but I WISH the US would get it's act together and switch to metric. The math would be so much easier! My ability to add 16ths of an inch and correctly figure out what's needed for a, say, 77 and 5/8ths inch span drastically diminishes over the course of the day as I tire out!)
So, having spent a little time on a handy metric converter:
The fence height is roughly the same (given that it's a fence and the ground doesn't cooperate and stay level, 'roughly the same' is all you can get!). I've no idea what labor costs are for fence here, but given that we paid about $1000 for materials for 18.3 meters of fence, I'm guessing it's not too different!
I'm actually surprised -- I'd have thought our materials would be considerably cheaper because we're in an area with a huge timber industry. I assume we're using different woods -- I assume you use what's local to you, or pay through the nose!
Our fence is cedar and pressure treated whatever. We'd have loved cedar posts, but they cost twice as much, so PT it was.
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Accordingly all our fencing materials used in this project are pine, treated to H3 & H5 levels. Don't ask me what they indicate, but H3 is general weather proofing, and H5 is the grade for sticking in the ground. Posts are 4x4 and rails 4x2 with the planking and caps whatever (I'll get my tape measure out if you really want to know!).
Note that although we are a metric country, the old imperial habits die hard - read 100x100 & 100x50 for the above sizes, but guess which falls off the tongue easier? And, being an old sod, I grew up with Imperial, so tend to think Imperial rather than Metric, which leads me to think Imperial in Australia, but Metric in New Zealand, even though Australia went Metric not long after I left in 1974...
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BTW, I've seen this before because my dad's old shop buddy was Australian, but I do get a kick out of the fact that we have 2 by 4s and they (and apparently you!) have 4 by 2s. :P
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It's actually easier to talk about it with you, because NZ and the Western US seem to have very similar building practices, as compared to England where they don't worry about earthquakes and lots of places are built of brick.
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Here in Wellington, anything under Richter 6 generally only evinces a guessing game as to what magnitude and how far away and deep it was, followed by frequent refreshing of the Geonet recent earthquake page. Geonet even provide a twitter feed for earthquakes over MMC 4 which one of my sons, now resident in London.uk, follows.
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And ugh about your slumlord and Narsty neighbors. I have a couple friends of mine who had to go to city arbitration with one of their backyard neighbors over replacing a fence there that I think was on the property line or something, or maybe my friends' property, in order to force him to help pay for its replacement because I think it was too ramshackle.
There's always that option, if it gets down to it... :/
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Y'know, a not-very-admirable part of me thinks it would be kind of fun to go to court/arbitration with Narsty, just because I'm pretty sure he couldn't actually hold himself together in that kind of setting for a whole hour -- his version of reality changes to fast, and he switches from angry bully to condescending at the drop of a hat. I'm pretty sure all I'd have to do is shut up and let him dig his own legal grave.
But. All the wiser parts of me know that it'd be a pain in the ass and make living next to him even worse.