Cedar Fence tutorial- the Low way

Post Spikes??? Are they for you He** yeah! There are many ways to secure a fence we choose the metal fence posts. Our posts are going into soil with a rock grade The soil is firm and we are not going to use the traditional method of cement and sonic tubes. If I was going to use sonic tubes I would have dug to below the frost line, Inserted the cardboard paper wrapped sonic tube, then inserted the cedar post, with some gravel in the bottom of the tube just to hold the post upright and the fill with cement, support the post so it wouldn't move with 2 X 4 scrap and wait and wait until the cement sets and hopefully your post is straight in it's heavy base. OR I could use the metal post spikes. The spikes like the one above comes in various lengths, some at 12, 14 16". It is your choice you want to look at the lay of the land and just how deep you can get. As we have a lot of rock we went with the 12" spike

We of course did not have a huge sledge hammer- good thing some one would get hurt!! DH used a 2 x 4  1 foot long and laid Xways and a heavy brick to pound down the spike, The fence is going between the side of the house to this metal fence gate. We will probably drill a hole in the fence gate and anchor it against the 4 X 4 wood post. . So at this point you are going to ask me why not cement? Well what happens when the post rots? DO you know how heavy those darn globs of cement are at the end of the post, you need to dig it up and probably take down your fence etc.  This way you can remove the post and put a new one in.Now next ? Oh if you have a cement pad that you want to put a post on , or a fence down the middle of your driveway, You can get metal supports that look like the top half of this spike, so it would be the collar with the two bolts on the side, The collar has 4 screw downs that you would drill through to mark the screw holes and then use the appropriate screws for cement.

Looks like rain we are now awaiting delivery of the wood!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOT WOOT.Maybe I am a bit too enthusiastic

                                                  Move the drain spout ever so slightly

      Measure and cut the post to size that is going to attach to the wall. we left it off the ground about 4"

Make sure your screws are long enough to go through this wood and what you are attaching it to

Look to see you have the right size drill to make the first whole and then a thinner one the last 1-1.5" so that you are countersinking the screws

This is our screw countersunk- it will be hidden by the fence panel

                           First fence panel is up and straight, now time to add spike 2. Do you see the little grey thing on the bottom right? That is our spacer it is a high tech one- a brick. LOL
Oh and by the way we lightly screwed the fence panel  to the posts at the other end so that when we add the next one if there is any change we will be ok. Now this spike did not want to act nice, it wanted to be a little skewed so we put that 7 foot post in and banged it down it went in well and it was straighter then when we tried with the smaller piece of wood. Never fails!!

I know about now you are asking where is jane- well I am holding on the fence section , looking pretty and i| I am taking pics- hopefully the fence is still level. NOTE to self if your level doesn't seem level- AHHA we found that the plastic trim on the LEVEL was making it scew once they were removed EVERYTHING was level

First panel up and lunch break and did I mention it is raining! OK torrential rain, we will have our lunch, then desert and then T................Part two is a little more exciting.
We are going to have to cut the panel ( it came in 6 X8 section ) so I will try to capture that, basically we will remove one end CAREFULLY and remove the panels that are extra. THEN we will put it back making sure that it is well nailed and the trim reattached. Not only will it look good, IT WILL STAY together not like another we saw............... Stay tuned see you soon. Part 2 will follow here...............

We are back at it, The rain won't stop> SO we were looking at this section it is 96" and we need it to go into a 63" space. What do you do?

If you look at the far left of this photo you will see there is a 3.4" trim,If you cut and throw that away the whole fence will eventually fall apart.So we took that into consideration , we ended up cutting into the fence measuring from the right to left 62". We laid it flat to cut, do this and you won't have the fence disintegrate on you. Cutting the excess from top to bottom straight cut. Now we need that end piece that is  3/4" we then had to use the reciprocating saw to cut through the 6 nails at the top 2" and the bottom 2" OVERKILL! We then nailed this piece to the 62" cut fence and we nailed it.. literally . Look how it fits

At the far right there is an iron gate, we anchored the last post to it, by adding a screw to the fence gate just to make sure that everything is flush