Broke ground

When I got home Friday night I saw the big pile of fencing materials piled up in the yard.  Ali told me how she went out and looked at the tire tracks from the delivery truck and determined he did not run over any sprinklers, however he may have dumped the fencing and posts right on top of one, oh well.  Ali told me how she was really upset that I gave her hard time about the fence delivery stuff.  I told her I was sorry and didn’t mean to get her upset, I just didn’t want to come home to a busted up sprinkler system.

We both were surprised that the pile of “stuff” wasn’t bigger.  For some reason it seemed like you would need more to do 1000 feet plus of fencing but I guess not.  I was not in a rush to dig into the pile but I did notice something.  The bundle of 140 fence posts were supposed to be all 3′ to 3 1/2″ in diameter.  There were a number of them that were significantly bigger and smaller than that.  The big 8 foot posts also varied greatly in size.  Another thing that we noticed once installation commenced was the majority of the poles were not very straight either.

Our Saturday morning got off to an early start as a woman showed up at our door at 8:15 to do tests for the life insurance we are picking up.  We were told the woman was afraid of dogs so Ali and I took turns sitting outside with Nicki while the other was getting tested.  The tests involved answering a bunch of health history questions and then measuring your weight and taking a blood and urine sample.

I weighed in at a svelte 178 pounds.  The urine sample was a bit weird.  She had you pee in a small cup with no lid.  After I was done I had to carefully walk out as to not spill anything and then simply place the open cup on the kitchen counter.  It was weird having two open urine samples sitting 3 feet away from me, but whatever.  Then came the blood test, my least favorite part.  I hate blood draws.  I can’t watch when blood is being taken from me, if I did, I would probably pass out.  Even the sound of my blood going into a vial makes me ill.  I managed to stay conscious thankfully.  I didn’t tell the nurse about my aversion to the process until she was done.  Everything was wrapped up by a little after 9.  The nurse told me she had four more people to visit.  She does this part time for extra money.

Later in the morning Ali and I went out to pick up a couple things.  One thing we grabbed was a new bed covering kit I saw at Sam’s.  I told Ali I liked it and wanted to show her.  I have been tired of our bed looking like a hodge podge of old, disjointed elements that looked very redneck in appearance.  The set I saw had nice earth colored blocks that would match any color we were considering painting the bedroom.  The only downside is the lighter color and micro suede fabric is not exactly agreeable to a hairy black lab that likes to lay on our bed often.  Ali said we had a blanket at home we could throw on top of the bed for the dog to lay on.  When we went to actually put the set on we saw another negative, the cleaning tag said DRY CLEAN.  Oh well, it isn’t getting dry cleaned.  We’ll see how it holds up in the washer.  It was cheap enough that we can risk it.

After Sam’s we stopped at Home Depot.  I wanted to get some tar for the fence posts.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to tar the bottom half of the posts or possibly just the top.  After doing some reading at home afterward I determined that the best choice in our situation would be to just tar the tops of the posts to seal them from water seeping down into them.  It’s a task I will probably leave to Ali to do after the fence is installed completely.

So about mid-afternoon we decided to go out and start work on the fence, even though weather was far from ideal for doing so with temps in the 80’s with high humidity.  I felt very unsure of myself and was wondering what exactly I had gotten myself into.  We finally decided exactly where it was going to be placed along the house and started off on the orchard side, clearing rock along the border in order for me to sink the first post beside the house.  I was worried that digging right next to the house would be a problem because of construction debris that may be buried there but I had no such issues.  I got down to the required two foot depth pretty easily.  We plopped a post in the hole, plumbed it and then Ali held it while I back filled and tamped.  Friday over lunch I had bought a new fiberglass post hole digger and iron tamping rod, both of which went to good use.  We put in the second post right beside the border, again with no issue. 

We then hopped over to the other side and started clearing where we were going to start the fence line.  I cut back a bush we had in front of the house utility lines to the ground.  It was sparse and ugly looking anyway.  Ali started to clear the stones in the area. About then the neighbor across the street came over.  He had offered to give me a hand getting the project started as he had fenced in his entire area years ago.  I welcomed his expertise. 

We went back to the other side and decided to pick up work over there.  We had to build the first H support which uses the longer, thicker and heavier 8 foot posts.  Digging the hole for these was not fun as instead of two feet, you need to go down 3 1/2 feet.  The last foot or so is physically demanding as you need to really pull hard on the handles to keep the scooped dirt from falling out.  Back filling these posts also is a challenge as they take almost the entire hole, trying to jam dirt back into them is not easy.  I had to immediately dig another deep hole for the second part of the H.

The next chore was to put the center support in.  We had to make a notch on each post for it to rest on.  I brought out my big reciprocating saw to make the horizontal cut.  The neighbor used a small chisel I had to knock out the wood in between.  We placed the cross support in and it fit well.  Next up was the brace wire.  Originally I had planned to install one wire in the direction of the pull like I saw illustrated in my fence building instructions I printed out.  However Ali had different ideas.  She said that just having one wire would bug her, she liked the evenness of having wires criss crossing both directions. Ok dear, a criss cross it is then. 

I was surprised how the brace wire install went.  Basically you loop it high around one post and low around another and then twist it secure the ends.  Then you stick something in between the wires, in my case a big adjustable wrench,  and just start twisting.  As you twist the wire gets super tight, locking the H assembly together.  Adding the second wire adds to the rigidity.  Originally I thought I had to leave something in the wire to keep it from unwinding however that wasn’t the case.  The wire so thick and heavy that once you twisted it, it stayed twisted even once I pulled the wrench out.   The H felt good and solid after we were done which is what you want.

All that was left to do was hang the 4 foot gate.  Doing so wasn’t too hard but involved more grunt work trying to twist the coarse threaded hinge into the post.  The picture above shows our stopping point for Saturday.  Having the neighbor over was awesome as he was able to demonstrate how to do things since I never tackled fence building before.  He said he would come over the next morning to help some more.

I was beat up and tired just from the few hours of fence building.  Despite going to the gym 4 or 5 times a week, setting up a fence uses muscles in a totally different way.  The post hole digging is by far the toughest part of the job.  I plan on doing the front section manually and then get the hand auger when I take a long weekend to work on it.

My Sunday morning did not get off to a good start.  I came out to the what sounded like a helicopter running in the utility room.  The noise was from the automatic litter box.  The motor was seized and just made this incredibly loud noise as it tried to free itself. I pulled and pushed on the rake for awhile and was able to break it loose but the rake motor was toast.  As soon as it encountered any resistance it stopped and resumed the noise.  I congratulated Buttons for finally breaking the litter box with her excrement, f’ing cats.   So I just added “new automatic litter box” to the list of things Ali was going to pick up after the gym.  So after f’ing with the litter box for awhile and tending to the other cat needs, I take Nicki out.  She only did a quick number one and was back inside.  I grab my pop tarts and milk and head for the computer room.  I am stopped dead in my tracks by a nice heaping, smelly pile of dog shit to the right of the front door.  Evidently while I was messing with the cat excrement jammed littler box, Nicki decided she couldn’t wait and dropped a deuce on the rug.  WTF??!!!  I see her back in the living room, I point to the pile and say menacingly “WHAT DID YOU DO? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!!”  Instantly her ears drop and she slinks off to the bedroom in shame.  I go into the bedroom, unable to keep this annoyance to myself and wake up Ali.  I told her that Nicki shit in the house while I was cleaning the cat litter.  Ali was shocked out of her slumber with the news, this was another first in the Nicki accident journals.  By the time Ali got out of bed I had picked up the majority of the pile and had the Spot Bot scrubbing away on the residue.  Luckily it managed to do a good job of making the remnants disappear. I was in disbelief that the dog shit when I was just around the corner.  I was extremely annoyed to say the least.

Well Ali left for the gym and I headed out to start work on the fence.  Instead of continuing off the section that we ended with Saturday, I figured it would be smart to start on the corner on the edge of the property and work back towards the house.  Doing so would allow me to break the distance into equal sections, making the fence look as uniform as possible from the road.  The sky was overcast but again the humidity was off the charts.  WTF it is March, cut me a break with the humidity already.  When the sun broke out later it really got brutal.

I was feeling tired after digging out the first 3 1/2 foot hole for the corner post.  The humidity just sucked the energy out of me.  Digging out by the property line was tougher as well because instead of digging through the house mound which was made of fill brought in from the back, I was digging through compacted, original soil.  The ground was much wetter as well, at the bottom of the hole I actually hit some ground water.  

 Shortly after I plopped the post in the ground my neighbor came over.  I noticed right away that back filling the big post with sticky sand would be tough.  There was very little clearance around the post.  My neighbor suggested pulling the hose down and blasting around the post to fill the hole with wet sand.  His suggestion again turned out to be a good one, after a minute or so the post stiffened up as I blasted wet sand around it.

Our construction efforts were moving along smoothly although again we had issues with the big posts not being very uniform in size or shape.  Most of them had a big end and a small end and many of them were somewhat warped as well.  When I was digging the last post for the corner I somehow managed to dig the hole crooked.  When we dropped the post in it was at a bad angle.  When we tried to pull the post out it wouldn’t budge as the bottom of it was in shallow water, making it stick in the hole.  Thankfully my neighbor has a big tractor that he brought over.  We wrapped a steel cable around the post and then around the bucket on his tractor and pulled it out.  If we didn’t have his tractor I would have had to dig that post out by hand.

By the time Ali got back we had that corner built and the 10 foot gate installed.  All that was left was to install the line posts in between the two H braces.  Ali was impressed with how much we got done while she was out.  After we got the line posts in, my neighbor went back to his house for a few hours.  He said he would come back later and we could attach and stretch the fencing.

After taking a lunch break Ali and did some more fence work.  We built the small section on the other side of the house, cleaned up a bit and I found an old pole that I was going to use as my fence stretcher.  I was a bit nervous about the fence stretching process.  I didn’t know how well it would go since the fence was going downhill.  I found out it actually was relatively simple. 

My neighbor came back over late afternoon and brought his come-along with him.  While I attached the fence to the H brace by the house, he attached the come along to the tractor and the pole that I had woven through the fence.  Then all he did was crank on the winch which quickly pulled the slack out of the fence.  Once it was taut all I had to do was nail the fencing to the posts to maintain the tension.  It was actually simple and relatively easy.  After we had it attached I called Ali out to inspect the end result as it was her blessing that really matters in the end.   She said it looked awesome.  She said that initial concerns about us doing the fence ourselves had subsided now that she saw the end result of our labor.  I was glad to get her stamp of approval.

I thanked my neighbor for all of his help.  Without it, I would have REALLY struggled.  By the time the fencing work was done on Sunday I was a beat up, exhausted, sunburned mess.  Both of my forearms were covered in little bloody pock marks from grabbing the large fence posts and both carrying them or pulling them out of the holes when needed.  My arms and especially my neck was burned to a crisp.  During the afternoon I got so hot that I threw on my bathing suit and jumped into the 75 degree pool.  It felt chilly for a few minutes but after that it felt good.  Ali looked at me like I just jumped into the Arctic Ocean, while she simply put her feet in the water by the edge.  

I was very pleased with what we got done.  It was more than I expected. I now had experience doing every facet of what needs to be done to complete the fence.  My plan is to maybe put a few posts in during the week after work and then bust ass more on the weekends.  Once I get the front section on the other side done I will rent the auger and knock out line posts very quickly.  My neighbor offered up more help as I need it which is great.  Just like the sprinkler system, I’m sure there will be tons of sweat equity invested into this project but I am also sure the end result will be worth it.  Ali is beyond excited about what we have done so far. You can see all the pictures I have taken for the Fence Project here.