All that Square Yardage and the Quest for a Steel Fence
June 25th, 2009So what’s the big deal? Just install a fence and call it a day, right? Well, its not that easy. First, take a look at what we’re dealing with: a doublewide lot. Our home sits on one lot while the other, serving as a side yard, is the width of a regular residential lot. So we’ve got twice the fencing the think about, because it ALL needs to be replaced.
Decades of homeowners patching things together has left us with a total of EIGHT different fence materials including wood, CMU block, chainlink and red brick. Two of those surfaces are our neighbor’s redwood toolshed and studio flat, which sit right on the property line due to lack of zoning setbacks in 1946. They’re actually the most acceptable of the eight surfaces, so to keep things on budget they are staying for now. One less fence to build.
That still leaves hundreds of feet of fence to put up, and the economy to reckon with — no sense in putting in a fancier fence than necessary. We’ve always wanted a steel fence, either the hotrolled or rusted variety, but found the cost and labor to be completely prohibitive in the styles we liked, which is a rustic modern style becoming mainstreamed around Phoenix at places like the Phoenix Zoo, and DC Ranch.
We obsessed over modern-compatible fencing so much that three years ago, we made a few web pages about it. Luckily our webstats tell us that wer’re not alone on our quest for nice, affordable modern fencing. And despite Matthew’s exasperated threats to pick up the phone and call the block fence installer (and in later discussions, to my horror, American Fence for a fancy retro chain link number), I have a feeling the wait will be worth it.
The sine-wave corrugated steel arrived for our fence today… all $X thousand dollars of it in 24-foot lengths. At 20 gauge, its too heavy for me to even handle, so that’s where the muscle comes in. It gets installed in a few days, Friday or Monday if all goes right.
But how we got here is a story all in itself, and I’ll only take you back to the last few months and spare the years of bickering and bargaining over what type of fence to build, and focus on the process. Because its not just about the fence, its about the whole yard and how we want to live in it.
