It Should Be Easy

I spent a good chunk of this weekend helping my son and his wife build a fence in their back yard. They have had a busy summer of home improvements. The big job was building a garage, which is quite an undertaking if you know what you are doing, but pretty much everyone that worked on the project had a smattering of knowledge and a surplus of opinions. It made for some fun times. The garage was erected and you’d think that was an end to it, but there is the electrical yet to be put in and now, since there is a trench already excavated, why not put in a gas line. I haven’t mentioned the soffit (yet to be completed), the stucco and stucco repair on the main house.

I know; crazy mofo’s. I guess they felt that their lives hadn’t been completely turned upside down so why not toss a fence into the mix. The good thing is that come next year there won’t be so much that needs doing. I don’t have the heart to tell them that life just doesn’t work like that, when Mother Nature sees a vacuum, she wants to fill it. So I was over there to be a strong back and a weak mind.

 In a perfect world, it would take a couple of hours to tear down the old fence, a couple of hours to dig some new holes and with any luck maybe get the posts put in by days end. Someday I hope to visit that world, but that day didn’t happen this weekend or in this world. The old fence came down pretty easy, but the posts wanted to stay in the ground and had t be jacked up. Good thing I brought a jack. That is pretty much when “good” stopped being an adjective that I would be able to use.

The holes proved to be exceedingly difficult to dig because of the tree roots that had grown in just where we planned to dig the holes. Each hole was a bitch and a half to dig! We used shovels, post hole shovels, saws, hatchets, axes, pry bars and more than a few of the most colourful words in the English language. I took solace in the fact that at least the materials hadn’t been delivered. THE MATERIALS HAVEN’T BEEN DELIVERED!! We kept poking away at the post holes and by about 4:30 the guy from Rona arrived.

I guess that Rona has hiring standards for their drivers that forbid a full set of teeth or intellect larger than a medium sized grapefruit and must have at least one “sleeve” of tattoos. When Brendan asked for him to put the load in the garage, he just kept saying with a stupid grin on his face, “That ain’t a’ happening! That ain’t a’ happening!” So, the Rona guy dropped the load in the alley and we got to take a break from post hole digging so that we could move several thousands pounds of cedar into the garage.

That pretty much killed all desire to finish, but we dug the last hole and even managed to place one post in place before packing it in for the day. I dragged my old saggy ass home and began to chew an assortment of over the counter pills, washed down with a hot soak in the tub.

Early this morning we found that all of the holes needed to be slightly large in one direction or the next. Perfect! It took most of the morning and a small portion of the afternoon to place the posts. The posts are all in and sometime this week we will tackle the rails and fence boards. I can’t imagine that we will run into any difficulty at all. It should be easy………