Please Fence Me In

Sam was good enough to come by today so we could put the busted section of fence back together. An old panel had separated from a new post, because toe nailing (with or without added screws) simply isn't very effective when the wood in the crossbars is rotting out.

The good news is that I had lumber in the garage from a previous repair plan that hadn't been executed in that form (we hired the contractor who rebuilt one long section of fence that was in horrible shape and also fixed several posts, but not so much it turns out the sections connected to them). This meant that we just needed to rip out the old fence section, haul it up to the patio, salvage the useful pickets, throw the dangerous to the dogs rusty nails into a bucket for disposal, and then build a new section between two nicely stable posts.

Piece of cake.

Well, piece of cake if Sam and I weren't both dealing with various problems in knees and hips which slowed us down quite a bit. But we used the joist hangers to drop the 2x4s between the two posts -- an arrangement which is much more stable than toe nailing -- and then just had to nail the surviving pickets back up. We had to replace five pickets, so I went into the cache in the garage and retrieved those. Overall, it took us about five hours, which is acceptable.

And the fence is up, which is admirable. :)

Tomorrow, I go back to practicing for Debbie's Interfilk concert at FKO...