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I don’t have a concise title for this post. I was going to call it staining posts, spacing and nailing planks and troubleshooting but that seemed to long. Also, the next step is going to be more of the same.

I failed to take any pictures while we worked on this first side of the fence so here it is. You’ll notice that about half-way between each 4×4 post (that’s either anchored to the concrete with an EZ Post bracket or concreted into the yard) Jason added another vertical 2×4. Each plank is nailed to this 2×4 to keep the planks from warping or bowing out between the 4×4 posts, which are a little less than 8′ apart.

This is where we left off when we had to go buy more wood. We just have a sedan so it takes a lot of trips to the hardware store to get all this wood.

Our handy EZ Post brackets cause a minor predicament because the planks couldn’t be nailed into the post for the bottom 6″ or so. That is enough room for pesky disgusting cats to get into our garden. Not acceptable.

Jason came up with this solution to add 2x4s along the sides of the posts at the bottom so he’d have something to nail the planks into.

That works.

Here’s a look from the other side. Lucy approves.

We’re using this scrap of wood as a spacer to make all the planks equal distance apart. When we’re working together (and I’m not taking pictures) it moves a lot faster because I get the next plank ready and place the spacer while Jason does the nailing. (Oooooh… I love those sexy arms!)

Proper fence etiquete is to put the outside, finished side of the fence facing your neighbors and to put the backside facing your own yard. Because this fence is not going around the perimeter of our yard—and we may some day add a perimeter privacy fence–we opted to put the finished side facing in. That created another slight problem when it came to the first corner. Jason came up with a clever solution using a 2×4.

Here’s an illustrated top view of the corner solution:

Nice and clean looking on the inside corner.

We’re using 8′ long planks and we purposely put the fence posts less than 8′ apart so we could trim off the excess and get all the ends clean and square at every post. Jason set his circular saw to the depth of the planks (they’re 1×3’s so approx 0.75″) and trimmed off the ends of the planks at the center point of the post.

It’s fun to watch.

Here’s what the other side of the post looks like. The planks are cut at the halfway point of the post so that Jason has room to nail the planks for the next section of fence.

We may or may not have learned this lesson the hard way on the first post: make sure you put all the horizontal plank nails only into one side of the post.

Because in the next step, you’ll be adding more planks to the other half of the post.

Excess post is cut off with the circular saw. (We got one 10′ post for this corner because of the height variance from the patio down to the yard. Not necessary, obviously.)

So here is where we left off. Out of wood. Out of time. And it got cold out.

We’re hopeful we can get it done in the next couple of weeks. Notice where Jason started testing out the stain/sealer.

The finished fence should end up looking just like this architectural trellis on the face of our house:

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Step 1: Inspiration, Step 2: Planning, Step 3: Posts