Building a wood fence with the old guy from Gran Torino!

[vash]

Haha. The Clint Eastwood movie character.

Our border fence is gone. I damn near knocked it over with my crappy corded leaf blower. It’s time. He tried to hire his usual guy. No answer, and he ran off a few other guys.

I tried to hire a fence outfit. You know the ones. Big trucks, with warehouses full of building supplies. Not the cheapest option; but certainly the most efficient. He said no.

I finally found one smaller operation. I explained Gran Torino (GT) to him. He showed up smack on time. He’s hired
What a monumental task!
GT demands; he wants to buy the wood himself to use his 10% Vet discount
100% redwood. 4x6 redwood is awesomely expensive.
He wants one bag of cement per hole. We fought this and won. Turns out he is moving in spring and was gonna leave us with a crap fence.
This and that.

The wildfire did two things. Blew up the cost of fencing and made it he material scarce.
That 10% discount is not worth it. I had to fight to get GT to okay delivery. He wanted me and his 75 year old self to pick up the stuff. It would have been five trips. I had to do one trip already when the delivery truck showed up with cedar planks.

If this fence guy doesn’t show, I’m stuck with a couple tons of material in my driveway. Yippee! He is supposed to show this morning. I bet we save $250 by not going with a big fence operation.

[livi]

Looking forward to the pictures.

[aigel]

One of the most fun home projects imho ...

[Taz's Master]

Originally Posted by aigel

One of the most fun home projects imho ...

Then you've never run a post hole digger in Pennsylvania. Smash rocks beneath the 1/4 inch of surface dirt with a spud bar, use digger to remove a table spoon of crushed rock, repeat. Then look down the proposed fence line and consider whether you'll be done before snow.

[billybek]

Paint it baby poo green when your are done!

[vonsmog]

What color are you going to paint it, how about baby poo yellow!

[billybek]

Great minds think alike,
Fools seldom differ!!!

[speeder]

Yep, after the fires, the fence guys are busier than a whore on payday. Out where my trailers are stored, part of the nice wood fence around my friend's property burned in the Creek fire. It's a really nice fence w some custom details, not sure if it's redwood because it's stained.

I'll take some photos when I get out there for the fence fans who drop into this thread, it was built as a spec house maybe 10 years ago by a guy w pretty good taste and the details like the fence all had some thought put into them.

He actually managed to get some fence guys off a web search to come out immediately after the fire a couple weeks ago and they weren't interested in the job because they did not know where to source the materials to match it, etc. It's a large perimeter fence and only part of it burned so replacing the whole thing would have been very expensive and a damn shame.

He's massaging his headache and ruminating w the fence contractor about wtf he should do, (his entire property is just open to the world w/o fence complete), when one of the guy's workers says, "why don't you call these guys?", while pointing to a small plaque on a section of the fence.

We could have had the whole thing torn down and rebuilt w/o anyone noticing the tiny plate w the original fence builders company name on it.

He called them immediately and they said, sure, they remember it well. He got to be their first customer in what I'm sure will be a line stretching years, they started rebuilding the burned sections the next day.

There are a couple lessons contained within, one of which is to sign your work somehow if you build custom stuff. You never know when someone might just be admiring it years later and want the same thing or similar.

[john70t]

Another option is to wait it out.
Stake some deep spikes and run heavy wire and brackets.

(If the remaining fence looks ok and other matters are more urgent..that is.)

[Baz]

Originally Posted by vash

Haha. The Clint Eastwood movie character.

Our border fence is gone. I damn near knocked it over with my crappy corded leaf blower. It’s time. He tried to hire his usual guy. No answer, and he ran off a few other guys.

I tried to hire a fence outfit. You know the ones. Big trucks, with warehouses full of building supplies. Not the cheapest option; but certainly the most efficient. He said no.

I finally found one smaller operation. I explained Gran Torino (GT) to him. He showed up smack on time. He’s hired
What a monumental task!
GT demands; he wants to buy the wood himself to use his 10% Vet discount
100% redwood. 4x6 redwood is awesomely expensive.
He wants one bag of cement per hole. We fought this and won. Turns out he is moving in spring and was gonna leave us with a crap fence.
This and that.

The wildfire did two things. Blew up the cost of fencing and made it he material scarce.
That 10% discount is not worth it. I had to fight to get GT to okay delivery. He wanted me and his 75 year old self to pick up the stuff. It would have been five trips. I had to do one trip already when the delivery truck showed up with cedar planks.

If this fence guy doesn’t show, I’m stuck with a couple tons of material in my driveway. Yippee! He is supposed to show this morning. I bet we save $250 by not going with a big fence operation.

[VincentVega]

Too funny

I found it was faster to just build the damn fence than play 'will the guy show up'. Plus, now I have a nail gun. Once you build a jig or some stops the process is usually pretty simple unless its complicated. Its a fence, dont make it complicated.

[vash]

To be clear I REALLY like Gran Torino. He’s had a rough year. His wife, dog, and cat all passsed away in quick succession. I hang with him to keep him social. He loves my cooking.

He is really set in his ways; I get it.

And I suck ar building a fence. Last time I hurt my back a bit.

[tevake]

Originally Posted by Taz's Master

Then you've never run a post hole digger in Pennsylvania. Smash rocks beneath the 1/4 inch of surface dirt with a spud bar, use digger to remove a table spoon of crushed rock, repeat. Then look down the proposed fence line and consider whether you'll be done before snow.

That's exactly the case in Az where I've been the last few years, I swear the mountain where my sister lives is mostly solid rock, where not solid then mostly very big rocks.

Now here in the Fl panhandle, its entirely the opposite, can dig a three foot deep hole in a few minuets with a hand post hole digger. It's good here to wet the area first so the sand doesn't cave in . Which is a good thing as I'll be putting in about 400' of new fence.

Cheers Richard

[flatbutt]

Originally Posted by Taz's Master

Then you've never run a post hole digger in Pennsylvania. Smash rocks beneath the 1/4 inch of surface dirt with a spud bar, use digger to remove a table spoon of crushed rock, repeat. Then look down the proposed fence line and consider whether you'll be done before snow.

man do I hear you on this! Same here in NWNJ. The most frequent sound you hear when digging here is CLANG!

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by tevake

...
Which is a good thing as I'll be putting in about 400' of new fence.

....

I need something along one of my rural property lines...need a visual/audio barrier. I'm still debating bamboo on 200' or so...what would Vash do ? Even for soft panhandle sandy stuff....rent thee an auger. What type of fence?

[craigster59]

When I put up my fence in Fillmore I used metal posts (like for chain link fencing) with wood adaptors to run top and bottom 2x6 plates. Put a 2x6 stud 24" on center and sheeted it with T-111 panels. Capped it on top with a 2x8. Cheap, quick, looked great and strong as heck.

[craigster59]

Looked similar to this...

[vash]

That will last forever.

[vash]

i'm done!!

i let GT make most of the decisions. fence is super sturdy and should last the rest of my life..definitely confident it will be in awesome shape when i sell the home. the price was higher than i expected..but any number divided by 2 is easier to swallow. i am glad that phase is behind me. GT wanted me to have the board-side of the fence..but his side, with the post and 2x4's visible is damn fine looking!..perfectly cut and plumb wood is beautiful.



on a side note: GT sat down with my wife and talked about a malignant tumor the doctors found..i offered to drive him to the doc visit today, but he said he was cool. any treatments that required him to have a driver..i'm there!. the dude just lost his wife to cancer!! what a kick to the nads..

[GH85Carrera]

The neighborhood I live in and virtually all the houses around here have stockade fences. The builder of course did cheap fence. Wooden posts and low quality fence panels. Over the years more than a few posts rotted out at the bottom and broke off. Most people just put in two posts, one on each side of the rotted post because the big glob of concrete is a real pain to pull out.

I rigged up a fence post stump puller outer. I drove the longest lag bolt I can find down into the wood part and that lag bolt is through a piece of chain I have. I then run the chain to the top of a new fence post, and use the old one as a base to prevent it from being shoved into the dirt. I just lean back on the vertical post and it is a big lever to pull the old stump out. It worked great. It helps a lot to have a two man team.

I pulled out 6 of mine and a neighbor saw me doing it and came over to investigate. We ended up doing several of his post stumps. All of mine I replaced with metal U shaped posts and used deck screws to hold them on.

My dirt is 100% clay. Just clean the organic parts out and make bricks. Post hole diggers are a real pain to use. Take a bite of dirt, use a scraper to clean off the clay, then use a second scraper to clean off the first scraper. Repeat.

Vash you are good neighbor. The world needs more like you.