so, after tuesday’s lessons, i was raring to go…
…i’d learned my lesson on the auger. throw that fucker on “RUN” vs “START” to actually start it, and after a few pulls we were good. i took one big step back from where i’d originally planned on putting the fence, and sunk the fucker into one of the planned areas for the middle hole. about half an hour later all four holes were dug and done. i went off to buy gravel and concrete.
i got three bags of pea gravel (60lbs each) and then had to go somewhere else to get six bags of quick drying cement. i ended up, on four fence posts, not even using one whole bag of the gravel and four of the six bags of concrete, realizing it takes almost one bag each for the posts.
you put about three inches of gravel in the bottom of each post hole to help with drainage. then you fill the post holes up about a third of the way with the posts already in em and propped up with kickstands you attach, then you dump in the powdered concrete and wait. it SAID it would only take a half hour to fully set, but an hour later everything still looked pretty wet due to it being just ball sweat humid. i decided to forego that half an hour shit and wait a bit more than half a day, due to os having early release the next day so i used that as an excuse to bail work early and come home.
because we were now in the unexplored territory of making the vision in my head a reality, i was slow and meticulous in getting the first “panel” of the fence going, and after an hour and some change we had this:
(pictured with a level on the top because i did that with every board and it was level all the way up!)
then came the gate opening – which the ufc, again, had a “help keep sean from getting super frustrated” suggestion – do a completely DIFFERENT pattern on the gate. i mean, yeah, it wouldn’t blend, but it’s a good place for a “contrasting” panel, and that way if the other wide side didn’t line quite up due to uneven ground or whatever it wouldn’t be as noticed as the odd panel would be just enough space between.
so i made myself a deal – i’d never done fence posts, or post holes, or even concrete for that matter, so if i somehow got the two post relatively close to where they needed to be for a matchy matchy gate i’d go for it, otherwise it was literally back to the ol’ drawing board to come up with an alternate gate pattern. i measured the two posts – perfectly faced the same, perfectly perpendicular to the ground, and the width at the very bottom and the width at the very top were within an eighth of an inch of each other.
gotta make it all line up then!
so, i measured the height (which i knew was taller than it needed to be but i’d but it off later) and to my surprise the leftover off an eight foot board was the perfect width (it’s serendipity, baby!) and so i used the leftover as a template and cut the first four boards, attaching them from behind so there were no screws showing. i then attached the hinges and then took it over, lined up the four boards with where they’d match on the panel and hung the gate – and it worked.
that’s where i stopped thursday night. friday, i took the boy to school, came home, and got started – the gate came together pretty quickly, and the last panel was super easy as it needed eight foot boards, so there was nothing to cut, just space em even and screw em down. by lunch what had started as this:
now looked like this:
not bad for a self taught guy who started by building ramps in the 80’s!