Fence me in... please.

I had no clue that paint choices would elicit such a response from my audience. It's awesome. Thanks to everyone who chimed in. It looks like paint option number 1 is the winner. I sure wish the process was as easy as it is with photoshop.

Our fence project has been at the forefront of the spring season.

A very busy road goes in front of our house. It hasn't been a problem in the past, especially since Emma saw our cat run over by a car 3 years ago. She's been especially cautious. Mandy on the other hand, has no concept of the danger and likes to play chicken. Add one very quick little boy who is crawling at 5 months, and you've got one super nervous mommy.

Jeff saw my concerns and we worked a fence into the budget now instead of 5 years from now.

Thanks to my blog audience who gave us sound advice and we chose a 4 foot narrow picket vinyl fence. We ended up ordering it from an online source called USA Fence. It wasn't necessarily the cheapest of the cheap (Home Depot has that corner on the market), but it was the best quality for our money. The 8 foot sections are reinforced so they won't sag. Also there are no external brackets that end up rusting.

We did lots of driving around looking at terribly installed vinyl fences. That's what we really didn't want. Our new fence has a job to do (keep the kids in) and it also needs to look great for a long time. Jeff did research online about how to do everything "right." I assured him that I watched at least 5 fences being put in on This Old House or other HGTV type shows. That makes me almost an expert.

The fence arrived in a big pallet of pieces a few weeks later. My husband is so hard core. He started the project in the rain, digging the two holes for the driveway posts right away by hand. We planned on a gate, so he welded up some iron posts for the white vinyl post to slide over the top. The base of the posts are buried 3 feet with a 2 foot iron base and buried in twice as much cement as recommended. Just don't back into our end posts. You'll hurt yourself.

(Can you even believe someone gave these boots away for free at the MOPS swap?)

I was actually working, people. I ran the post hole digger!

The fence system is really ingenious (it just took me 3 times through spell check to spell "ingenious").

It integrates, each piece building upon the next. It allows for a lot of flex so we could level and re-level as we went.

The first 4 holes went beautifully smooth with the post hole digging attachment on the tractor. But then we got closer to the big Black Walnut tree and encountered these:

The roots were everywhere. We didn't find any advice in our research, so Jeff attacked this problem with a chain saw.

I love this man.

In all my years of This Old House watching, I've never seen them cut tree roots in a 3 foot deep hole with a chain saw. I'm really not sure what they would do....

Not put a fence near a tree?

Even with our complications, all 8 of our posts and rail sections were in by the end of the afternoon. A wind and rain storm were predicted, so we quickly filled in the holes enough to hold (or so we thought) the posts in place.

The next morning the fence was all out of whack. I was seriously worried. It looked like one of the awful, Home Depot, DIY specials we made fun of during our research process. The rain made the ground incredibly soft and the posts settled and the rain twisted them to and fro. Jeff came in after surveying the damage and said, "Well, the fence fell over."

We learned a lot during this process. First, the ground was really too saturated and the project would have been much more fool proof in the Fall or Summer. Secondly, we also learned that the fence system is very forgiving. With a bit of bracketing and tweaking, the fence looked as good as new. Which is good since it was new. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Jeff anchored some things in place, waiting for the water to go out of the holes, and the job took a bit longer than we planned. But the finished project look like this:

I look out the window now and see this view and think it was worth the effort.

It totally fits the style of the house and I'm glad we didn't go with the swoop as I originally wanted.

(The Fence Company website photo)

What would I do without my faithful blog audience? Make terrible fencing choices, that's what.

Since this picture was taken, Jeff installed the two white rail gates that close off the driveway. No more playing chicken.

It's coming time to paint the house. I knew it. My painter man extraordinaire knew it. But it wasn't until we saw this picture that we realized that the brand new, spankin' white fence makes the house look really in need of paint. 

And that's where you come in. 

Do you want to come paint my house? I make stellar oatmeal cookies as payment.

No, no, really, I just need you to lend your expertise on a color scheme:

Option number one is to paint the house light brown with white shutters, white trim, and a red front door.

Option number two is to paint the house a lighter brown, call it "taupe," with white trim, dark green to black shutters, and a dark red front door.

Option three is a lighter taupe, brown shutters, and a white front door.

There you have it. Make sure to vote. And schedule a work day. I'm joking. Totally joking. Sorta.

Our fence project was really a lot of fun. I would encourage all you DIYers to give fencing a try.

* Beware that if you google "fencing" you'll get results of white suited figures jabbing pointed sticks at each other. *