Privacy Fence, Part I

I have really terrible neighbors that live behind me. I live in a bedroom community of homes built in the mid-1950s consisting of small 3-bedroom/1-bath bungalows (pre-renovation) where backyard backs up to backyard. The neighbor to my left built a 6-foot privacy fence some years ago, and the neighbor to my right an 8-foot fence 3 years ago. But all that separates me from the neighbors behind me and, currently, 3 horrible, poorly treated (which goes a long way in explaining their horribleness) dogs, one of which spends the majority of its time in my backyard (climbs the fence), is a decrepit chain link fence.

Now unless you've been on Pluto taking samples of the atmosphere in order to determine if it's a planet or not for the last 18 months, it should come as no shock to you to learn that I don't like most people, mainly because they tend to be thoughtless and stupid. Add the fact that the folks I share a fence with are clueless retards, and you might jump to the conclusion that these mongoloids are the greatest sense of anxiety for me as a homeowner.

About 3 weeks ago, on a Saturday morning, for whatever reason, I decided to bail, temporarily, on Kitchen Demolition 2006, and take on Privacy Fence Fest Extravaganza and Drinking Tournament. I tend to get overwhelmed by projects, big and small (I believe I've mentioned this before), so that particular morning I played severe head games with myself and vowed to go at my own pace, set no deadlines, take it slow, do it right, and fend off as best I could any and all frustrations that came my way – structural, physical, psychological, sexual – as best I could, and give myself credit where it was due for whatever progress I was making, little or great. The "courage in a can" did wonders.

So off I was to the Home Depot to buy posthole diggers and a San Angelo Bar, a 6-foot tempered steel 35 pound (at least it seems like it) shaft about an inch in diameter with a diamond-shaped bit on one end and a chisel-looking head on the other. One of the early, frustrating roadblocks on Project Fenceway was encountering the vast root systems of 50 year-old shrubs and trees, and Paleolithic concrete deep within our planet, earth. I was going for an 8-foot fence, so the holes needed to be, at minimum, 24-inches deep and set in cement. So one can imagine my angst when I'd encounter apparent boulders at 4 inches deep. (I think I cried once.)

But with Bud Lite coursing through my veins, dogs piercing my eardrums with incessant yapping, and anger welling up in my loins, before I knew it, I had three holes dug, 24 inches deep. And it only took 4 hours!

That's when it hit me. This was extremely doable. I was making progress. Getting shit done. And I'd forgotten that I can be quite adept at this sort of thing. It's not like I'm framing in a room or doing finish carpentry. It's a fucking fence. It's not like people are going to be standing on it or anything, or even leaning up against it, for that matter. I.e., it doesn’t have to be perfect.

I was also very pooped. I don't know if you've ever had to work a San Angelo Bar, but it really could be considered an upper-body woodshedding. So with an incredibly beautiful Autumn day in the deep south, mixed with a generous amount of endorphins, with some progress on a project thrown in, life at that moment was pretty good. And it wasn't just the beer talking this time, either.

Sunday rolls around and I continue the same routine: slam diggers into the ground, hit a root/rock/boulder/concrete/China, work The Bar until I'm spent, slam diggers into the ground, then The Bar, diggers, The Bar, diggers, and so on and so forth. These holes today are proving to be quite the test for yours truly's patience, attitude and determination. By 2:30 in the afternoon I was utterly used up and went back in the house to watch football and call my oldest brother and talk to him about fasteners.

"So it's an 8-foot fence?"
"Yeah."
"And your posts are 8 feet apart?"
"Err… Yeah, more or less." ("more or less" might be a bit on the forgiving side – what's your definition of "8 feet"?)
"And you're going to string 4 2x4s across the 4x4s?"
"Yes."
"Then you don't need to lag bolt your 2x4s to the 4x4s. Use 3-inch 3/8th lag screws. Should be fine."
"Okay. I'm also thinking about putting up decking instead of fencing."
"Why?"
"It strikes me as more sturdy."
"Yeah. It might help dull the sound, too."
"So, drywall screws?"
"No. Get 2 1/2 inch decking screws. They usually come in a box of like 500 or so that includes a custom bit."
"Okay. Great. Thanks. And tell the girls [my nieces] that if anyone offers them pot at college to take it and save it for me. Ha ha ha!"
"Ha ha ha. Haha ha ha!"
"Ha ha ha ha!"

Progress. Fatigue. Beer hadn't tasted this good in years that Sunday evening. I could feel my mood lighten as I contemplated taking back my backyard from those retarded philistines behind me: landscaping, another deck, covering the deck my brothers helped me build 4 years ago. I was actually… excited about where I lived, and my small but charming backyard became transformed in my imagination. Was this the same momentum I'd had when my oldest brother and I redid one of the bedrooms with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves 3 years ago? Yup.

The next Saturday I awoke with a touch of anxiety. Today I was setting the 10-foot posts in cement. How would I get them straight? Will they line up correctly? Will I use too much/too little concrete? Will I ever find love again? Will SNL suck every bit as much this year as it did last year? (No. It will be worse, believe it or not.) Will the 4x4s be sturdy enough to hold up 4 2x4s and then decking? Will the Tigers make it to the world series? What's that flashing?! &c., and on.

But wait. Didn't you like work as a stonemason's apprentice for a summer in Colorado, and didn't you actually mix the mud when your oldest brother laid block for the foundation of his house?

Yeah. Relax. Take a deep breath. Go to The Depot and get the 4x4s and many many bags of cement. Go at your own pace. Do it right. Take your time. Don't get frustrated.

So I do.

I get back, tune in the Auburn game on the radio, it's turning into another perfect Fall day, and I proceed to mix up the mud in my wheelbarrow. You may or may not be aware of this, but good mud should have the consistency of something right in between mashed potatoes and Cream of Wheat. Not too runny, not to thick. While mixing up a batch in a wheelbarrow with a spade is not exactly as strenuous as working The Bar, it's not a stroll down Easy Street right into downtown Snapville, population: Done! It's more like lugging a telephone pole up Backbreak Hill past Fatigueberg, population: This sucks! Picture the whole time the neighbor dogs barking constantly as I'm setting the posts in the hole, and you can imagine that my mood was pretty bad.

But when I got the third one in, and started the process of dumping cement in the hole, leveling the post on both sides, more cement, more leveling, more barking, more cement, more leveling, barking, barking, barking, the project had begun to take on a life of its own. Not only was this doable; it was very doable, and, further, was being done. This is the hardest part of a fence: Setting the posts so that they're as straight as you can get them and that they line up pretty much perfectly with one another. The leveling part was going really well. The lining up part? Not so much. I didn't run a string or a chalk line when I dug the holes the previous weekend. I just sort of eyeballed where the holes should be in relation to the existing chain link fence. Bad move. Oh well.

There are a lot of crappy, fast-growing trees along the chain link fence, so I'm only able to go so far before I have to stop with the posts and get the power company to come out and prune them out of the power lines. So as Saturday's early evening shows her face, I've set the last post I can till then, and make plans for the morrow.

Sunday's rosy fingered dawn approaches in the east, and I stumble outside with the dog to survey my progress. Damn. This is gonna work. I'm a little nervous about the compromised line of the future fence as I gaze down its breadth, but I continue measuring between posts to see how long the 2x4s I will buy need to be. These are what I call "stringers", although it's probably not technically correct to do so. Fuck you. It's my fence.

The stringers go from 4x4 to 4x4 roughly 2 feet apart, give or take, and will be attached, "fastened", if you will, to said 4x4s with 2 3-inch lag screws on either end. You drill a pilot hole (though you don't need to; I do because I want to avoid even the remotest chance of splitting a stringer), then you make a countersink with a large drill bit, then you sink the lag screw into same. I went ahead and bought a $200 dollar drill, easily justifiable because I'll easily get my $$'s worth out of it this winter and spring. It's a sweet 2-speed number that, when used with a 3/8th ratchet drill bit, makes fast work of sinking the lag screws.

But when you're running stringers on an 8-foot fence all by yourself, it's time consuming. I had swell clamps to hold the 2x4s up, but the process of getting the stringers level can be a bit tedious. Still, somewhere in the middle of running the stringers from post 2 to post 3, I realized that the hard part was over. Other than banging my head on tree branches and lumber and having to get into awkward positions to screw in lags, the rest of this process was going to be gravy. Just the previous day I was so pissed off at myself and those fucking dogs, not even 24 hours later I'm walking on air because the thing is actually starting to look like, well, a fence, though a self-consciously skeletal one. But the skeleton of a fence nonetheless. Dude! Right on!

That night I slept the sleep of the just.

Which brings us to this past Saturday and Sunday, 2 of the most perfect days weather-wise all year. Today I'll get decking and a humungous box of screws.

Decking is essentially 1x6s, which are actually 3/4x5-1/4 inches thick and wide, and 8 feet tall. It's pressure treated lumber, as all of the pieces have been, so there's no need to paint or stain it. Now I don't have a truck in my massive arsenal of vehicles, but what I do happen to have is a 1989 Isuzu Trooper, copper in color, with a back seat that folds down and a failing clutch. Ka ching! I head to The Depot and load up 40 1x6s (see above), balance the load in the back and head for home, pretty jazzed about the whole deal, until I take a corner just a tad to aggressively, and lumber flies out the back of my Trooper all over the road. So I'm sitting in my car looking at all the lumber in my rearview mirror and waiting for one of the those epic car accidents that seem to be the overture for every episode of CHiPS and, well, laugh. I'd turned off of a pretty busy road, but most of the lumber followed me onto the street I'd turned onto, so the carnage was confined mostly to the neighborhood road. I crammed the shit back into Ole Rusty and we resumed our journey.

Oh, did I happen to mention that though The Depot keeps their decking indoors that almost every 1x6 piece I deemed suitable for my fence was not dry? I.e., wet? Which prompted me Sunday while back to retrieve more of it to shout at a Home Depot Customer Service Representative, "Hey, wait just one second. Some of this lumber is dry. Dry, I tell ya. Where's the wet stuff, pal. I know you've got it hidden somewhere, soaking overnight in a giant pool of saltwater. Now out with it!" He didn't laugh, but the folks holding a brand new Kohler toilet seat in the adjacent plumbing section did. Score!

Wet decking isn't a deal killer. It's just that there's a crucial difference between dry lumber and wet lumber. And that difference, when it's all said and done and I've tallied how many 1x6s I've put up, is, roughly, 13,000 pounds. I've got some decent spring clamps, but will they hold up a board that weighs 20 pounds because some underpaid black guy hoses down all the decking at the end of the day for whatever reason?

Answer? Yes. I'm on a roll. With God on my side, who will stand agin' me?

It's hard to describe what happened over the course of the next 2 days. As the bone structure grew tissue and sinews, musculature and definition, a wall was being erected between myself and my domestic nemesis, Doofus R. McRetardington, Sioux name: Eyes Real Close Together. All the while I'm putting up decking, the dogs are yapping their yap. So with not a little self-satisfaction I can hear myself, instead of shouting the profanities of last weekend that would make David Mamet grab his little Notebook of Neat Ideas and Things I've Overheard – no, I was muttering things like, "Hush now, small one. Soon, but not soon enough, my visage to you will be a distant memory in your chickpea-sized brain. Fret not, my insane canine child. You'll not have the likes of me to disturb your twisted slumber for many moons, and I'll be but a specter in the eve, a breeze through the Willows, a dream from which you'll awake timid and shy. Oh, and if you don't shut the fuck up, I'm going to brain you with this shovel, you stupid little cunting motherfucking fuck. Be still."

I got about half of the fence done. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, other than my ex-girlfriend, the one-the-got-away. Alabama Power, A Southern™ Company, is coming out Monday a.m. to cut back the trees that are in my way. So tomorrow I'll finish the fencing to the left corner. Sunday I'll buy a chainsaw (Nice!) and take out one tree so that I can dig 2 more post holes for the right corner and set the last 2 posts that afternoon. I'm taking Monday and Tuesday off, and if all goes well with the power company guys, by the grace of god his majesty, I could be drinking a Coors Lite looking at an 8-foot tall piece of personal empowerment. Momentum may be a bitch to get started, but once it's rolling I'm banking on the fact that it's going to be hard to stop.

Fences don't make good neighbors. Fences hide stupid, retarded, idiotic, thoughtless, rude, ugly and stupid neighbors.

[Note: Sorry if this was so long, to those of you that read it. But I don't care. I don't even care if anybody reads it. It just felt good to say. See y'all Wednesday.]