Fence Building

One of the things that happened during my reading hiatus was building our neighbor's fence.  The same neighbors whose yard we cleaned up during Be the Church Day.  It was actually this project that started the plan to clean up the yard too.  That's usually how it starts!  One thought leads to even more and then it's beyond what we could ever possibly do!  Thankfully we have a very service-minded church and we had a fabulous crew of dedicated workers to help us complete this project.

I started the day pounding over the nails from the posts that we removed so we could put them out for the garbage men since it was trash day and they come early in the morning.  I was able to get all the old posts ready for disposal, plus a few other parts of the fence before the garbage trucks came.  Justin helped a bit too!

Travis helped put the new posts in.  He wore his hard hat again all day long.  We had great weather for fence building.  And our neighbor's yard is very shaded so that was helpful too!

The process was very methodical.  These guys have done this before!  They laid out the line for the posts and then started in with the auger, and then the post crew came through.

This is Rick.  He's one of the elders at our church.  He's Travis' new best friend.  And he's my friend too because he let me use power tools.  Cordless circular saw... so...much...fun!

We worked in crews around the yard when in came time for pickets.  We each did one side and two crews worked the long side in towards the middle.  It actually worked surprisingly well!  And we were able to move fairly quickly.

Except for when we needed several supervisors.  When the supervisor needs a supervisor, we're in for trouble!  Getting started was the hardest part, I will give you that.  The side that Rick is leaning on was the side that I worked on and Jimmy (the first supervisor) worked with me.  It was a hard because we put the pickets on the far side, the side with all the bushes.  Not good planning on our part!

This is the only proof I have that I actually helped.  Rick took my picture since he didn't like that I took the last one.  I did a lot of clean up.  Boys are very messy you know!  The leftover pieces became Travis' play things.  He built himself a wall in our yard.

This is the side that Jimmy and I did when it was finished.  I amazed myself.  And wouldn't you know it, it's still standing!

We finished in the early afternoon and so here's the guys being entertained by Travis.  And those large piles of leftover supplies?  That's for OUR fence!  That's coming next week.  The guys are coming back for round #2!  Everyone survived with only a couple of bruised hips from a runaway auger.

The day was an awesome testament to the way the Lord works.  He used us to do great things for our neighbors.  I am really glad that we did it, even though it was a lot of work.  Somehow I just know our fence isn't going to go near as fast.  (I might already know something you don't, trust me on this...)