One of the many, many things that I knew I’d have to fix when I bought my forty year old ranch house was the old wooden fence that ran around the border of my backyard. The fence was quite literally falling apart before our very eyes. The grey slats actually blew in the breeze and after every rain storm I had to go out and pick up the pickets that had fallen into the neighbor’s lawn. I had various pieces of cement block and even some old chicken wire set up to block the holes in the fence that our small dog could fit through. I had to replace the wood fence, and soon.
Old fence with first piece of new face installed.
Even though the wooden slats were falling right off the boards, the posts were actually in pretty good shape. They had obviously been installed professionally and they were still tight in the ground and fairly solid. They were 4×4 pressure treated posts which, as far as I could tell, were held in with cement (which is the proper way to secure fence posts).
So my goal was to replace the fence but save myself a fair bit of work by leaving the old fence posts in place. I could do this partly because all my posts were still strong and secure but also because they were all spaced out exactly eight feet apart. That was key because I had to buy my replacement wood fencing from a big hardware store and the only lengths they offered were eight foot lengths. Most fence lengths are this long, but every so often you’ll come across a custom fence with some different measurements.
I ordered 23 sections of wooden fence and arranged to have them delivered a week later. Now I had to actually get to work. I figured it would take me about three days of work with about four or five hours of work dedicated to the job each day. I took a few days off and made it a long weekend. Because it was going to take a few days and because I have a toddler and dog who like to run around the backyard I had to plan this project so that at the end of each day I always had a full fence up.
I slowly worked my way around the yard, following pretty much the same pattern of work over and over again. This is what I did 23 times:
Lesson Learned: Don’t pound the old fence off with a hammer.
1. Remove One Section of Old Wooden Fence:
I started out by removing one section of wooden fence at a time. I removed my first piece of fence by taking a hammer to it and pounding it off the posts. The fence was held to the post with several different types of carpentry nails, all which were fairly rusty. Lesson learned: pounding a fence piece off a post is not always the best way to go. My fence was so rotted out that I ended up literally shattering half the fence into a million tiny splinters. This shattered fence was difficult to haul to my disposal pile, filled with nails and left a trail of rotting wood and debris.
From that point onward I removed the fence pieces with more brain than brawn. I took a reciprocating saw with a metal cutting blade and simply went down the post cutting the nails like hot butter. Once I cut all six nails holding on each fence piece it would often just fall right over. I still had a few pieces fall apart on me, but it most held together and I was able to put them on a stack of old fencing. I then went over each piece with that same reciprocating saw and cut off any stray nail heads or ends that may have been sticking out.
2. Put the New Piece of Fence in Place and Drill Pilot Holes:
I then took a new piece of fence and placed it up where the old one was. I used a small bubble level to make sure each piece was more or less straight. I used some scrap wood under several portions of each piece of fence to hold it up and level it out. I then used a small drill bit and drilled some pilot holes in the fence, making sure to go through the cross beams of the fence and to hit the post fairly square on. I drilled pilot holes because I’ve learned long ago that drilling pilot holes almost completely eliminates chance of splitting wood. Because some of these fence pieces are being drilled near the edges there was a chance of splitting.
3. Drill Screws into the Wooden Fence (and Hopefully the Fence Posts, too!):
Once everything was more or less in line I would simply put sturdy 4 inch deck nail on the end of my rechargeable drill and drive it through the pilot hole of the fence and into the fence post. The original fence was held together with nails. I don’t like nails for things like this because I find them slow to put in, prone to error, always increase your chance of splitting the wood and require too much effort. This is not to say that I never use nails. You can find pros and cons for each, but generally nails should be used on almost any wood framing that holds any real weight or could be dangerous if it fell apart. I don’t put my simple wooden fence in that category. Nails bend and a generally stronger for holding things together, but for most of my little home improvement projects I take the easy way out and use screws.
Four full fence pieces shown. Only 19 more to go!
And that’s about it. Like I said, I did the whole project over about four days, managing to get between five to seven pieces of fencing replaced each day. I did have two sections that were less than eight feet in length due to their proximity to my house. I simply measured them and got lucky enough to have both within an inch of the end of one of my slats on a full piece of fence. I simple cut the three supporting rows all in a line and put up the fence piece just like a full-sized one.
I haven’t yet put together the new gate and I don’t know if using screws instead of nails will come back to haunt me or not. This was probably the “largest” project I’ve worked on (space-wise) but certainly not the most difficult. It just took some patience and muscle to get each piece in place just right. Oh, and a quick update: a year later my neighbor replace some of his fencing as well. He didn’t choose the pressure-treated wood, but my fence was pressure-treated. You can see the difference in the photos after just seven months.
Overall the project was a little more work than I had anticipated and took a lot more time, but the end result passed the wife test: she liked it so much we just ordered 10 more pieces to replace the back fence, too. I’m excited to have our entire yard looking new and updated, but I’m not looking forward to spending another weekend in the hot summer sun.
So I guess you could say I’m sort of “on the fence” about my success!