Fence Mending

November 22nd, 2010

Our side yard fence was physically falling apart, which meant that we were using metal rods to hold it upright and boards fell off every time the wind kicked up. A board would fall down, we’d screw it back up, the posts would slump over and we would prop them up, seriously, we put up with this crap for almost three years.

The cause of the deterioration was the rotted off bottoms of the support posts and the poorly chosen nails that secured the boards in place. Both issues equaled ghetto failing fence.

We couldn’t afford to replace the entire thing, so in order to keep things budget friendly, we reused almost all of the weathered fence boards and just replaced the support structure.

That meant that we had to carefully disassemble the fence and install new 4×4″ posts. We called Carpenter Craig to come help since he just finished a big mending fencing project at his new house and had the skills and tools to help.

Digging post holes by hand? BLOWS.

Of course we hand dug all the holes, centered our posts and then Quikreted them into place.

Then the horizontal supports went into place. We just followed the design of the rest of the fence, nothing to exciting design wise.

Removing all of the boards (and all the nails) also blew. We had to be really careful since we needed the wood to be reinstalled. Four nails a board + a couple hundred boards is a whole lot of tetanus to avoid. Filthy dirty tedious work.

After all the wood was prepped, we strung a string line from the existing fence top to keep everything even and cohesive. Totally rocket science. Then we started screwing up the fence boards with some deck screws. Totally tedious.

One of our curious neighbors came over to watch. He tends to come over and watch while we do projects…and drink our beer. Lend a hand dude!

Speaking of neighbors…

So, the cat hoarding guy who lives next door (who shares the fence with us) didn’t want to chip in $100 to help pay for half the materials. We already said we would do the labor, and he still hasn’t paid for some work The Boy did over at his house when the city threatened to fine him, so we didn’t have much hope. But still, its kind of the principle of the thing.

Anyway, while we were working on the fence, weird neighbor guy’s ex(?) wife ran through the back yard and jumped on a chair to climb through the back window into the house. It was so unexpected and strange that I think she was really surprised to see us standing there. That’s the chair on the left. On the right is the pack of feral kitties staring as we worked. I can’t even begin to explain how much cat poop is all over our yard. Ungodly amounts of cat crap.

So anyways, it gets super dark very early now, so we had to postpone putting up the rest of the boards till the next day…

…and on the next day it was all about screwing fence boards up. It took a long time and was not exciting.

But then it was done! Check out the after compared to the before. NO MORE METAL RODS. It stands up all by itself! It’s a fencing miracle.

I am amazed by how satisfying it is just to have an upright fence. Not even an awesome horizontal slat fence, just solid, upright and private fence.

Oh yeah, we gave ourselves the nice side since we paid for it all, did all the labor and were covered in cat shit for our troubles.

It only cost about $200 to do the full repair and took two days. Not bad, if I do say so.

Now the perfect and professional shade sail doesn’t look so out of place next to our crappy wonky fence. I’m not sure if I want to finish the weathered boards. We were discussing some sort of opaque stain, but I think I kind of like it all aged and beat up. Something to think about for sure.

Solid as a rock. Straight as an arrow. Something something total cliche.

Thrifty!

November 19th, 2010

I’ve been out and about at thrift stores and a few estate sales over the past couple weeks. Here’s a selection of some of the small things I’ve picked up along the way – all the bigger stuff is jammed in the garage. I did find a bunch of vintage Navajo rugs for cheap at this madhouse estate sale and had to battle a lady dealer tooth and nail for them. I also picked up some Acoma pottery as well as other random bits and pieces, including this kooky hand carved walrus. The Boy forbade me from buying more art, but I fell in love with this nutty leaf painting that seemed like a very fussy Alex Katz and broke the ban. I also grabbed a pair of what I think will be universally despised once I post about them. Let me install one and live with it for a few days and see if it works…

I’ve had that photo on the right sitting on my desktop for ages now. I took it inside Kings Highway (because I am totally obsessed with that crazy huge pencil cactus) and just thought one day I would use it to show to someone at a nursery. I spotted it while cleaning off all the crap that lands on my desktop and thought it juxtaposed well with all my thrifty loot. Ugh. Juxtapose. Damn you art school!

Arounds the webs…

November 18th, 2010

If you guys haven’t had a chance to check out the new issue of Pure Green Living Magazine, do it. Do it now. Wait, finish reading this and then do it. Big thanks to all the staff and Celine MacKay for featuring our pad in their latest issue. You can check out our spread HERE (page 61- 71).

We live green by living cheap I think was the message of my interview…something like that…

We also got a nice little shout out in Delish Magazine. Holler.

In other corners of the web you can also visit my moonlighting posts at Emily Henderson’s blog. I took a stab at a Blue Tuesday post last week and this week I threw together a thrift store decor type deal-io. Pretty much I spot something in a thrift store that I liked (but didn’t buy) and pull together a bit of an idea board and some inspiration about how to make it go from crap pile to amazing. This week was somehow about how not to be scared of rattan. Hope you guys like it, I really enjoy designing up fantasy rooms with stuff I wish I could bring home…

BTW, I’m pretty psyched for Emily’s show. Have you seen some of the stuff shes bringing back from the flea? Those are some lucky peeps who end up with all that loot. Lucky, lucky peeps.