Text 13137, 79 rader
Skriven 2008-09-01 18:46:44 av DAVE SACERDOTE (1:123/140)
Ärende: Labor Day Weekend, Literally
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Hello, Americans, hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day weekend and
have bid a fond farewell to summer.  I'm stuck here at work, putting
in a 12-hour shift, but at least I have a desk job and it's not too
onerous.

Yesterday, though...Yesterday my nephew Drew and I put the Labor in
Labor Day weekend.

On Friday, I contacted a gentleman in a nearby town who had advertised
a free picket fence.  It needed to be removed from his front yard, but
anyone who was willing to remove it could have it free.  Figuring that a
picket fence would look nice around the garden, and keep the dog out,
I made arrangements to come by Sunday morning and remove it.  I hired
the nef  to give me a hand pulling the support posts and loading the
truck.

When we got to the house, I was a little surprised.  This wasn't any
ordinary "picket fence."  The fence posts, spaced every eight feet,
were 6 x 6 pressure-treated cedar beams, 48" out of the ground and
each planted 36" deep.  The panels were made of a pair of eight-foot
2x4s spaced 36 inches apart with 2x2 pickets attached, and trimmed on 
the street side with 1x2 pine facia to hide the 2x4s.  Each 2x4 was
spun at the end to a 1.5-inch diameter "tab" which fitted into holes
in the posts, like a post-and-rail fence, and each of the tabs were
secured with a 4-inch galvanized nail.  I'd guess that each post
weighed about 85 pounds, and each fence panel weighed about 50-60
pounds.  With a gap for a gate (no gate, though, just the gap) there
were ten posts and eight panels.

I went along the run of the fence with a wood chisel and cut a
depression around each of the nail heads so I could get a crowbar
behind the nails and pull them.  As I did that, Drew dug down 
around each post.  When the post was loose, we'd lean it out and
"disconnect" the panel from the post and put it by my truck, then
pull the post out and load that.  The little Nissan being what it
is, we made three trips back to my house with the fence parts.
Including a break to get Drew some lunch (I know from experience if
I stop to eat something in the middle of a day of heavy labor,
I'll get tired faster and won't want to finish) it took us six hours
to disassemble the fence, fill the holes we left behind, and hump
the pieces back to Chez Dave.

As you can imagine, this 4-foot-high wooden fence is a lot more than
just a "picket fence."  I knew as soon as I saw it that I wouldn't
be putting it around the garden.  

Last October, to keep the dog in the backyard, I put up some cedar
fenceposts and strung a wire cattle fence around the back yard.  
It's rustic (to be charitable hahaha) but it does the job.  
Maryanne and I decided that we're going to take down the wire
fence that faces, and is visible from, the street and replace it
with this gorgeous wooden fence.  If there is leftover, I'll 
cut one of the panels to create a gate and replace the tubular
steel livestock gate we have now (I still will need a gate I can
drive through.)

I plan to put the fence up myself, though I'm going to hire 
someone with a post-hole augur on a tractor to come dig the 
holes for me.  My hand-held post hole tools are okay for the
standard stuff, but they won't cut an 8-inch circle.

Anyway, I came home and took a shower, and found that Maryanne 
had picked up lobsters and steamers at the store.  So we had
a one-pot lobsterbake, which included Silver Queen corn from our
garden. (That's the ontopicizer.)

PS to our non-American readers:  Happy 1 September!


 

---
http://davescupboard.blogspot.com/ - Dave's Cupboard - Food and 
Restaurant Reviews; If I post it here in NCE, you'll find it 
blogged with photos at Dave's Cupboard.

http://bacon-labels.blogspot.com/ - A gallery of bacon package labels.
(The extra shelf in Dave's Cupboard.
 * Origin: Doc's Place BBS Fido Since 1991 docsplace.tzo.com (1:123/140)