the lay of the land

The previous owners had installed a chain link fence around most of the property and while it was still relatively new and rust-free, it had to go.  I take issue with fenced in front yards in a residential setting like ours and wanted to open the front yard up to the street while at the same time creating more privacy in the back.  We gave away the chain link fence as 'free with removal' and hired a friend of ours, Guy, with some fence building experience to come up to install the new one while we finished up painting the house.


Our next door neighbor didn't like our plans though and refused to let us take down their chain link fence which ran between the two houses.  We ended up putting our new fence about 1' into our lot.

In this photo you can see where the fencing was along the side of the house and the covered patio area between the house and garage.


The patio didn't really serve much of a purpose since the large deck was added.  Here you can see the couch the previous owners left us as well as the generator (yes, generator.  I don't know why.)


Since we only have a one car garage, we fenced off the patio area from the back yard and turned it into a carport.


We debated what to do with the fence along the front of the house and ended up installing it over the deck so that the entire sunroom would look out into the street.  This allowed the fence to be its full height on the deck creating more privacy in the back and a nice coffee spot in the front (as soon as we get some chairs out there that is).




Here's the view from the deck. The fence made the space more useable as Boyer is a fairly busy street.



There was an existing wood fence along the back of the lot that was original to the house and was left by the previous owners. We took down the panels but left and reused the posts. These photos are from the playhouse balcony. At the end of the fence we put a 16' wide gate to the alley.



For a day or two the playhouse was standing on stilts alone with no lateral support. I thought we'd lose it to a gust of wind but somehow it made it.


And finally, the before and after shot of the front of the house. We moved the mailbox from the sidewalk to the front of the house...sorry mailman.



Good job guys


Next we had Bryce's dad come to help us with some much needed landscaping. It was a great start we've been adding to each year so I think I'll skip the progress photos in lieu of showing the latest photos in a later post.