Has it really been 6 months since the last blog post? Well, to say that life has been busy is an understatement. This last home project gave me an easy topic for a post.

When we moved in two years ago, we had a fence built for our back yard. It’s no small fence either. The section of concern was the 200+ feet of privacy fence along the main road. The posts were put in around only 18 inches into the ground, and only the end posts and gate hinge post were concreted in. I’ve never built a fence before, so I was surviving off what the fencing guy said was needed.

Soon after it was built, the fence proved not very sturdy and started leaning really bad. The few windstorms we’ve had in this short amount of time have not helped either. Last December we had a windstorm that actually tore a section of fence apart.

In October of 2024, we needed a quick fix to get through the first winter. I heard from a guy at work about using expanding foam. The idea clicked. In one day, I shop vacced the dirt around 16 posts (every other one on our fence), which sucked about a foot of dirt out of the ground around these posts. And then I went down the line pouring expanding foam into the cavities around the posts. It worked! Most of the posts stayed solid enough through 2025. However, it was still apparent that we needed a permanent fix.

We evaluated our options. The posts needed to go deeper, but we still wanted a 6-foot fence. So, we needed new posts. We assessed the rails. They had been mounted between the posts and toenailed in at the ends. They were trash. Perhaps we could save the pickets.

We finally found a weekend this spring to take the fence down and rebuild it, since we needed to replace all the posts and rails anyway. As we began to remove the pickets, it was evident that they needed to be replaced as well. So yes, we replaced the entire length of fence. We also solidified every post 24 inches down in concrete. That thing is solid. We went through 4,000 lbs of concrete in one weekend, all with a wheelbarrow and a couple shovels. I also found a diagram online illustrating how I wanted the posts set in concrete. It executed smoothly!

Of course, another home project necessitated a few new tools. I thought through every step of the process to replace this thing, and I tried to make it as efficient as possible. Wie got all 31 posts erected, all retails mounted better, and a few sections of pickets mounted in three days. For the next week, Liisa and I used our spare time to put up the rest of the pickets. We were done the next weekend!

We’ve already endured a windstorm, and that fence is solid. Solid as a rock.

Our next step is to stain the fence. Bummer, I had to buy a sprayer.

SPECIAL THANKS to Jonathan and Missy for coming to help us that weekend, and to Joe for staying a good part of Saturday to help too.