Building This Fence Taught Me A Lot...
Description: This fence was a decorative redwood picket fence built to enclose a front yard. It was about 40 feet wide on the front and about 30 feet long on the sides – about 3 ½ feet high. It had a picket gate recessed from the sidewalk with an overhead trellis and pergola about 8 feet high.
Set All The Corner Posts First
I set all the redwood 4 x 4 posts in concrete (3 feet deep) at the edge of the sidewalk, recessing the posts from the edge a few inches so that the pickets would not overhang the sidewalk.
Positioning the corner posts was educated guesswork using 1 x 2 for bracing and string lines crossing each other attached to stakes to get corner locations and then dug out the post holes by hand with a post hole digger. These braces and string lines referenced the curb, the edge of the driveway and the front walkway as reference and measurement points of origin.
After the corner posts were located, braced and set in concrete overnight, I laid out the remaining posts positioning them about 7 feet apart so I didn’t have to buy 2 x 4’s longer than 8 feet for the rails - because even back then redwood was expensive.
Mortises For The Rails
I hand notched mortises into the posts on both sides to accommodate both the upper and lower 2 x 4 redwood horizontal rails. So when I finished there were four notches on the post – two on the side of each post - created by using the following tools:
chisels
dovetail saw
skill saw
wooden mallet
combination square
hammer
Then I cut the rails to the individual length between each post – which varied a bit - so the rail ends would fit snug into the hand notched mortises.
Use A Spacer Template
I also cut a spacer about 1 ½ inches wide which I used as a template to space all of the pickets. I first nailed the end pickets and made certain that they were perpendicular to the posts and then nailed the center pickets.
From the center picket, I nailed in each direction toward the end posts locating the pickets using my template as I went. This meant that when I got to the end posts, I only had to modify the very last pieces of picket to fit the remaining space.
The end result was very uniform. All pickets were the same distance apart and perpendicular to the posts.
Little things like that are very apparent to the eye – even though we may not know why it bugs us if the spacing varies. Maybe our minds seek continuity as a default.
Positioning The Gate
I recessed the gate from the sidewalk about two and a half feet by offsetting the 8 foot trellis posts about 30 degrees from the sidewalk pickets on both sides of the walkway. I also created an overheard trellis of 2 x 6 redwood notched into the front and back sides of the 4 x 4’s above the gate and then nailed 2 x 2’s at a 90 degree to the 2 x 6’s to create a simple pergola, even though at the time I had never heard the word pergola – or couldn’t even spell it.
It was a cool entry and a nice fence. Sorry no pictures. Maybe when I learn design software, I’ll add a sketch here later.
2 comments:
I really enjoyed the detail put into this post, one thing I want to observe about Redwood is it is high quality wood and like stated in this post a bit on the expensive side. Another less expensive solution is Western Red Cedar still beautiful, however not as dense nor as expensive. Don't forget to weatherproof either wood to prevent fading.
Jameson Thornton
Patriot Fence Company
http://www.choosepatriot.com
A very common mistake is that people do not realize that wood does not stick to concrete. The simple solution to this problem is to paint the bottom two feet of the fence post with black roof tar. The tar will seal the posts and allow the concrete to stick to the post.
Once the posts are set and leveled give them a full day to dry. If you start nailing rails and slats to the posts before the concrete has had adequate time to set the posts will be knocked out of level.
How to Build a Fence
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