Our DIY Fence

We used to let Lola (our afghan hound) out into the backyard to do her "business" and she would always come back and wait patiently at the door when she was done. On the morning that we left town to pick up Moses (our other afghan hound), we were so busy getting ready for our trip that we left her in the backyard for an hour or so. At least we thought she was in the backyard... After frantically searching the neighborhood for her, we found her one street over, lost, scared and very excited to see us. We had planned on building a fence for a while, but had put it off because we couldn't decide what we wanted it to look like. We knew we wanted to do something modern and budget friendly that we could do ourselves. While in Austin, we found a really modern house that had this wooden fence that we really liked. It had narrow horizontal slats spaced closely together. It seemed easy enough, so we decided to give it a try.

This is our $30 drill from Target. We were actually pretty impressed with it. We make DIY look GOOOOOOOOOOOOOD. Kinda...

Ridiculous. Anyway, we dug some 12" holes and used quick drying cement to hold our 4x4 pressure treated posts in place. We used 1x2 pine slats, spaced 1 1/2" apart, framed out the gates with 2x4s, threw them on with hinges, and then waterproofed the whole thing using a honey-colored water sealant. We also added a small wheel on the 7' gate for extra support.

Here's the finished project:

From left to right, the first section is just small partition beside our storage room. The second is a large gate in case we need to move anything big into the house (like a piano... someday, right?). The third is a side gate for access on the other side of the house.

Things we learned from this adventure:

1. We need more power tools.

2. Contrary to popular belief, pressure treated wood is not waterproof (unless it specifically says so on the label).

3. When waterproofing a fence, buy the sprayer. Using a paint brush takes forever...

4. Pine warps a lot. We had to change out some of the slats twice before we got some that didn't get twisted. We'll probaby have to change a few more over the dry summer months.