Columbus Holiday Weekend

In 1492, Columbus went in search of spices and “discovered” new land that Spain then took possession of calling it the Americas.

How appropriate, that this weekend, I am going to work with my neighbor in helping him put up fencing for a dog run and he’s going to help me place up a length of fencing in my backyard that abutts his front yard.

What’s mine is mine and what is yours is yours.  Take notice Columbus, wandering neighbors and domesticated pets.  You all need to find some other land to discover or a place to put your eyes, nose and feet, after we have completed our projects.

The human resources for this project, other than me, myself and I (who has never built a fence before) is my new neighbor who has told me that he was 12 years old when he first started working as a runner for a fence maker.  Plus over the years he has built a good number of fences himself.

For style and design, we are also going to follow the fine example of a "good neighbor fence" that our former neighbor built board by board last summer.  The only exception being that for the section that I am putting up I want it at a height of 7’, as opposed to the 6’ due to the fact that my back yard is viewed by all of the other front yards up this side of the cul-du-sac.  On the flip side, when in my back yard, I am can not escape from being in the line of site of their front yards, driveways and cars.

Not pleasant for any party involved.

The neighbor has warned me that since I am not doing a standard 6’ height that I more than likely will have to purchase the lumber at a local specialty lumber store, as opposed to the near-by and oh so convenient, Home Depot. 

Inconvenient and potentially much more costly.  But, for that particular section, I don't think I will sway in my decision for the extra foot of height.

I will need to make time to research this matter this evening and tomorrow.  If need be, I will contact one of the local, private lumber yards for availability, pricing and hours of operation, etc.

The neighbor is in charge of renting the power auger and I can already imagine my muscles are going to be screaming after we fight with that machine to pull the earth up from below to make room for fence posts.

Miss Utility has been contacted and as of this evening there are another set of utility lines marking the front of my property warning us where we either must dig carefully by hand tool or avoid all together, as lines can be up to 2’ on either side of their marks.

Since all of the utility companies had to respond and mark our properties prior to us digging, I also asked that they mark the remaining perimeter of my property.  This is for me to note and in the future I will be more aware of where lines reside underground.  Plus, be prepared for whether or not I can place additional spans of fencing around the perimeter of the side yards, etc.

My intellectual property name for this business endeavor is Sawyer-Finn™.  ;^)

Stay tuned, as I will update with photos and related stories.

10/08 AM Status Update

Neighbor that I am going to help build a fence with is sick enough that he's heading off to the doctor's this AM.

We met outside briefly to go over what I need for materials for the section of fence I am going to build.  But, in light of him being as sick as he is he agreed that it would be wise to put off our purchasing of supplies until he's feeling better and we can put a full effort into the digging of post (have to rent an auger) and hauling lumber and 80 lb bags of concrete to fill post holes, etc.