Technically, this is part two of last week’s post.
For those of you who missed it, a quick recap. We’ve had an above-ground pool for over 20 years and it needed to be replaced. Now that the hubby’s retired he didn’t just want a pool, he wanted a POOL. It might have been cheaper to go with an in-ground pool, but we aren’t able to do that because of the septic bed in the back yard.
When we bought this house, our neighbourhood was part of Hamilton Township, not the Town of Cobourg (which is why we had septic tanks instead of sanitary sewers). The first thing they did when they annexed us into the town is give us sanitary sewers (which we had to pay for) but we didn’t have to remove the septic tanks, just fill them up with approved filler and leave them in the ground. Had we removed it, we probably could have put in an in-ground pool, but that’s really, really expensive.
Anyway, when we put in the original pool the rules for such things were more relaxed. Fences only needed to be so high and they weren’t picky about what they’re made of. So we had a mixture of wooden, chainlink, and lattice (for the part at the front of the house to make it look pretty).
That ugly wooden fence had been there when we bought the house, but we added the chain link at the back when we got the first pool. There was chainlink and an ugly rail fence along the other side, but I didn’t think to get a picture of it before it was torn down. Nor did I get a picture of the lattice.
So that was the fencing we had. Now to tear it all down:
Notice the nice roll of chain link in the first picture. :-)
Now it was time to put up the new fence. We decided on wood for one side and the back. After the hubby put down the non-refundable deposit for the pool and arranged to have proper fencing put in (I think the chain link was only about 4 feet high and it needed to be 5), he went to the town for the permit.
Uh oh. Apparently the town’s website was out of date and the rules had changed. Fencing for pools now had to be 6 feet high for pools. Chain link had to be within a certain size of mesh, and the wooden fencing had to be made with vertical boards, not horizontal. If we wanted the decorative lattice on top, that had to be beyond the 6 foot mark.
It would have been so much cheaper to go with wooden fencing around the whole yard, but the neighbours on the west side have a huge vegetable garden and we didn’t want to block the morning sun from their garden. I’ll tell you this though, those neighbours better be planning to stay for a good long while because the posts for the chain link were driven down 3 feet and set in cement, so there’ll be no taking down that fence.
It was surprising how quickly the back fence went up. There are actually two guys working, one is behind the fence.
The hubby was careful taking down the old wooden fence because he was hoping to repurpose as many of the boards as possible into the new fence. However, once we saw how nice the back fence looked I couldn’t stand the thought of that beautiful wood getting covered with that ugly reddish brown stain so I talked him into going with all new wood for the side fence too.
They were done the back fence in a day. Then they were back the next day to sink the posts for the side fence and once the cement was dry framed it in so the hubby could do the rest himself.
This is a picture of the Bill the fence guy and the hubby working in the rain. Bill was only supposed to do the framing, but he stayed long enough to help the hubby with several sections, just to give him a head start and make sure he knew what he was doing.
And here are the finished fences:
And what happened to the wood the hubby saved? Never fear. There’s still the playhouse he promised the grandbaby he’d build her.
But that’ll be a post for another day. :-D
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