One Room Challenge: A New Fence and a Garden Path

Oh hey, it's week five, and we're finally starting to pick up steam. While we still have many projects left to tackle, the one that has loomed large in my mind for the longest time is finally complete. We finally replaced the fence. Our old fence, to put it bluntly, was an eyesore. It had been there so long that it was a fair amount shorter than all the opposing sides of the neighbors' fences, it was rotting from the bottom, and it was bowing into our yard. It needed to go.

As most projects go, this one wasn't nearly as straightforward as we hoped that it would be. In demoing the existing structure, we discovered that it was leaning into our yard because there was a retaining wall sandwiched between our neighbor's yard and ours that was leaning as well. We suspect the large cherry tree on the other side of the fence was to blame, so we had to move the posts to give it some breathing room and step the fence just a little further out from the retaining wall.

So we dug new post holes and poured fresh concrete before rebuilding the frame to attach the new boards to. Because the previous fence was rotting (we had hoped to salvage more of the wood, but the boards were spongey, and we couldn't get many of them off in one piece), we took a few extra measures to ensure that this one would stand the test of time. To start, we opted to use cedar. It's naturally much more rot and insect resistant than pine or redwood, and while it was a bigger investment upfront, we're hoping that it pays off over time. The next step that we took was to increase the drainage underneath the fence by digging a little trench and filling it with gravel where it had previously rested in the soil. We also left a small air gap to make sure that it stayed dry. The final step will be to cap the gap between the neighbor's side of the fence and our own to avoid collecting debris. This was probably one of the most significant contributing factors to the state of the last fence, which had been a mossy green on the inside and had collected so many fallen leaves it had become a defacto compost bin.

Once the posts were set and the frame rebuilt, we got to work replacing the fence boards. This part was the most straightforward. We cut the boards to length as we went on the circular saw and clamped them in place as we worked. We used spacers to keep the gaps consistent and marked out the nail holes in advance with a level and a guide; in about two days, the fence was complete.

The second project we tackled was creating a path with flagstones from the garden to the sandbox (which we just finished staining in the future deck color). Our yard is a series of rectangles, from the deck, to the planter boxes to the tiny lawn, and it needed something to break things up with a bit of curve. So, after watching a single video on youtube, as one does, armed with a shovel and a spade, I set out to lay the path.

Laying it out turned out to be one of the most time-consuming parts. It's like a game of Tetris trying to create a path out of organically shaped stones and making them fit together nicely. I focused on creating even gaps between the stones and staggering similar shapes to create some rhythm. Once we settled on a layout, digging them in consisted of cutting around the stones in the grass with a shovel to outline the shape, removing the stones, and lifting the sod out. Once the stone was set to level with the ground, and I backfilled around the edges.

We've got quite a few more projects to go, but I'm stopping to take a moment and appreciate where I'm at. I love how things are looking now, and I can't wait to see everything come together over the next few weeks! Check back next week for another update, and if you want to see it unfold in (mostly) real-time, follow me on Instagram.

Thanks for following along; you can check out what the rest of the participants are up to over on the One Room Challenge blog