Fence Day!

Well, Friday was the day. Linda Lee and a friend had booked a spa day on Saltspring Island so Brooks decided to take an early weekend himself. Jason, his friend and our house sitter for the winter had the day off as well so he drove down to Brooks’ on Thursday night and between their two trucks, they brought up the seven fence panels, seven ten foot long six by six posts and ten bags of quickset concrete. They started digging post holes at about ten and finished at five. The digging did not start off all that well as they found some old footings right where every post had to go. They solved this problem by moving the first post over three feet to make room for a gate. This gave them good dirt to dig in for every post except one where they discovered an old concrete structure about a foot under the ground. This required a trip down to Home Depot to rent a huge jack hammer ($60 for four hours) and an unplanned couple of bone rattling hours to break up the stubborn concrete.

The rest of the job went well enough although, much to Norma’s concern, many of her lovingly tended flowers and bushes got trampled. It was not easy to move the three hundred pound panels around without doing some damage but it can all be repaired.

The row of concrete blocks and toppers that previously marked the property line were removed and Norma called Beau, her lawn boy to come over to help her place the blocks as a border around the planting bed that divides the parking area from the patio. That kept her out of our hair at the fence project on the other side of the yard so things went a little faster and she did not have to watch her flowers get trampled.

We are very pleased with the final result! The posts will be trimmed down to size in a week or so after the concrete has had a chance to set.