Who Says Steel-shank Ain't Sexy? - The Fence Building Saga - Part I

Right, so there is no argument that steal-shank, knee-high rubber boots are or will ever be sexy, but I am sure the neighbors had a rolling laugh at us as we tromped around in ours last weekend.

Jared had last Friday off, we got up early and rented a gas post hole auger. We drilled 32 holes in about two hours. It was well worth the $40.00 but still grueling work. It had rained all week and we have a clay-based soil and lots of tree roots, so it took both of us to hang on to that beast.

Saturday morning, we set the posts. Home Depot had a special if you purchased 1800 lbs of cement you got an electric mixture for free for the day. Our calculation was only a few hundred pounds shy of that and it worked out perfectly. We set 18 posts in about three hours....and were still talking to each other by the end of it.

We did put on a good show for the neighbors when Jared thought he could set two posts at once and the second one began to cure before we could place it. You could hear us yelling across the yard... "Em, its fine"..."Jared, rip it out, its not perfect!" "I'm not digging 100 pound of concrete out, its fine". "I said rip it out, I am not spending $2500 on a fence to have it hung on a non-level post." "Em, you are being unreasonable." "I SAID..RIP IT!" Needless to say since Jared does not have the OCD I have and we now have one post that is less than perfect. (He was luckly, we were running out of time and had to get ready for Erin's party, so I let the post stay...at least for this week). We'll see how it looks when we get the rails on it. Moreover, we'll see what these DIY projects do to our marriage. Jared is a "good enough" type of guy and I am a obsessive compulsive perfectionist tyrant. But between the two of us we have enough experience to hopefully build the sturdiest fence in the neighborhood. ...Thank you Larry and Eldon for all those years of manual labor, we might have learned a thing or two :)

So repairs will probably be our blog fodder for the next three months, as uninteresting as it may seem, its life.

Photos courtsey of Erin....