Fixing The Fence

I put up this fence probably 40 or 50 years ago.  Our nighbor Larry had it built for me from cedar lumber.  The fence has been painted over and over again, and some pickets have been replaced when some of them deteriorated.  Well this winter, when the plows came by and pushed the heavy wet snow to the side of the road it broke loose two of the sections which fell down.  So I reattached the two sections and today started scraping and painting the whole fence.  It took several hours to do two sections.  I have two more to do.  You can see that the fence here definitely needs painting. But I am ultimately going to replace the fence.

So I started here on the right side of the photograph and I am just finishing up the second of two sections which I painted today. Do you like my little white seat I built?  I made it to hold binoculars when observing because I couldn't put them down in the grass.  But it is a perfect painting seat!   I have discovered that no one makes wooden fences anymore.  Everything is now plastic fencing which much of looks cheap.  SO...  I will buy the lumber and cut the pickets and attach them to the "stringers" that connect to the posts that hold the fence up.  It will be a long lasting job to do because of all the other work around here, like painting the west side of the house this season. But I will get this done.  Stay tuned!

I set my tools down and the paint and then realized it was an interesting photograph.  There is the scraper I used on all the wood, then the paintbrush to the right which I use to brush off all the scrapings, and then my paintbrush and can of paint, and my well used painting gloves.  A nice composition I thought!

And last but not least, a photograph of the finished painted part of the fence.  This is deceiving because it looks perfect, but many of the pickets are rotting in place and so are some of the stringers as well.  The third picket to the right of center is partially rotting away, if you look closely.  But at least the neighbor's won't dislike me because our property looks rundown.