Actually, I donned an Aussie green and gold sombrero. Much more exciting, don't you think?
And gloves, a face mask and sunglasses. All for the purpose of sanding our new (but very old) fence posts.
I've learned a valuable lesson here. Sometimes it's really not worth it buying cheap secondhand timber. Particularly not when it's covered in layers of thick old paint that peels in some places meaning you HAVE to sand it back to get a smooth overall finish, but it doesn't want to budge in other spots. It's not fun. I spent an entire day doing this.
The biggest advantage of second-hand timber (aside from the fact that it's cheaper) is that it's straight. Brand new timber often tends to warp because it's still young. Not these solid old posts!
Anyway, we very carefully measured the height that we needed each post to be for our new front fence, and the posts got the chop.
We tried to cut off the worst end of each post and leave the good stuff.
Allie tried to distract us as much as possible.
Playing ball is so much more fun than sanding posts!
Finally, as the day was drawing to a close, most of the posts were sanded and cut down to size. We decided to try to be smart and use the circular saw to help cut notches at the top and bottom of each post for the future horizontal rails of the fence to slot into.
It's so much easier to cut the notches when the top and bottom cuts are already made!
Since we had already concreted in the steel brackets for the posts to slot into, it was a relatively simple process to install the posts by drilling holes and then putting in bolts.
So in virtually no time, the posts were up!
I gave them a wash...
And patched up any holes with some putty. Unfortunately we didn't have any putty designed for exterior use, but decided to go with the indoor stuff, since it will be painted over anyway.
Tom then gave them an undercoat. We decided to buy an oil-based undercoat for extra tough adhesion.
They look so fresh and clean white!
After that it was time to attach some sleepers between some of the posts to act as a retaining wall.
The boys bolted them in nicely...
And then the process of putting up the horizontal beams and palings was reasonably simple. Daniel got the job of cutting all of the palings to exactly the same length, and Phil (Tom's brother) attached most of them to the fence.
Both the horizontals and the palings we used came from the original house. They used to enclose the area underneath it before we started raising it.
Once the majority of the fence was up, we started work on a gate. Tom managed to find one for sale on Gumtree (I swear I must refer to buying something on Gumtree once every post!)
It was a bit taller than we needed it to be, so Tom chopped off the timber boards at the right height...
And then used the grinder to cut off the steel frame at the right height.
I then took the newly shortened gate with the severed top bar off to the guy that supplied the steel posts we used to support the house when we raised it, and he re-welded it all together for us.
A couple of screws later, and it was installed!
It's pretty incredible what a difference a few days' worth of work on the fence has created. It's transformed the way things look from the street!
The gate certainly isn't the prettiest in the world, particularly not with those two fence-paling horizontals you see below the yellow boards (there was a large gap there, so we popped a couple of short palings in that space so that Allie won't be able to slide through there).
Plus, the secondhand palings certainly add a rustic charm that wasn't really the look we were going for. The theory is that a fresh lick of pain will solve that problem, and it's definitely an improvement on no fence at all!
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