We have been doing a lot of maintenance projects around the house in the past couple of months.  We painted the outside of our house and painted, rearranged and organized our office.  And those were the big projects.  Well, we had one more project to finish before fall, fixing the south side fence.

We are pretty lucky as far as fences go.  One whole side of our fence is the retaining wall for the neighborhood so we don’t have to repair that.  However, we had to fix the north side of our fence a couple years ago, so this was pretty expected.  On especially windy days, the fence would sway.  We made some temporary patches, but it would not survive another major storm.

So, Michael and our neighbor got together and started to tear down the wooden posts and all the boards for the fence.

Then, they put up metal posts in concrete (which had to set).

After that, they put up panels.  It was set in a step formation because of the way our ground slopes.  I think it looks great!

You might notice that the pictures start getting dark.  That’s because there were menacing, ominous clouds threatening rain.  These boys stayed out there all day Saturday to get it done.

The last bit was the front part of the fence, which included a gate on our neighbor’s side.  I have to share one awesome thing that happened, that I didn’t get photographed.  Throughout the day, our other neighbors would come over and help.  It was like the weekend project beckoned to them.  One guy lent his saw, while another helped with panels.  I was stuck inside, resting from being sick, but the power of community really was amazing.

I took these pictures of the finished product the next day because as soon as it was finished and everything was put away, as if on cue, it started raining.  I mean, POURING.  But the fence looks great (that gate was custom cut lengthwise to make a smooth fit…quite impressive).  We will probably stain it at some point, but the project is complete for now.  I’m so proud of my husband and of the community where we live!