Farewell, Fence. I hate you.

I feel like my days off this week have been eaten up by one project: taking down the wood fence around the house. I wasn't planning on tackling this until the spring since fall is normally when I paint a side of the house. However, it's still been a bit too hot for me to want to start painting yet. Oh, and this happened last week when we went to close the gate:

The wood just gave away at the hinge. I have hated this fence for the past year, so this was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. I was ready to have this thing gone. Since it was just a demolition, I figured it would be fairly easy. However, I should have learned by now that most home improvement projects take twice the amount of time and money as you predict. That was very true this time. It started off fairly easy; I bought a small reciprocating saw to saw the fence panels down, leaving just the posts, which the boyfriend pulled up later. Since the posts were only a foot in the ground, it wasn't that hard, but they were fully encased in concrete, which necessitated us buying a sledgehammer to break them up. Then we had large holes where the posts were, which necessitated another trip to the local home improvement store to buy some fill dirt. We did take one truckload of fence panels to the landfill, but we still have this in a pile in the back of the yard.

I'm hoping that my dad will be able to come buy with his trailer the next weekend I'm off of work so we can take the rest to the landfill in one trip, versus the 2-3 trips that this would take us with the boyfriend's truck.

I was planning on just living without a fence for a while, to see if I even wanted a replacement for it. We don't have kids or pets we need to keep in the yard or anything, so a fence would pretty much be for looks. However, I didn't really like how the end of our yard and the alleyway blended into each other in one particular section without the fence. Everywhere else the fence was, the end of the yard is marked by the road but after our driveway, the alley turns to just grass, no gravel or pavement. So, the boyfriend came up with the idea to plant some shrubs there just to deliniate it a bit better. They're Nellie R. Stevens holly and they are pretty small right now, but these are supposed to grow to 15 feet wide and 30 feet high. There's no way I want a hedge that high, but it will take a while until we have to prune it to keep it in check. Since they grow so wide, we only needed to buy four.

before:

after:

And hey, check out the progress that they made on the newly constructed house the next lot over. There's a roof now!

I still think I have to get used to the way the yard looks without the fence. I feel oddly exposed even though that three foot picket fence wasn't exactly for security. On the plus side I do feel like I have a lot more space for planting new things now. I think I'll restrain myself until spring though. I already had to resist the urge to buy some flowers when I was at the store picking up the fill dirt. Now that the weather is cooler, it seems like all the home improvement stores have restocked their plants.

before:

after:

After spending so much time in the yard, I have numerous bug bites and bruises on my arms and legs. I also managed to break out in a rash on my arm. I think it had something to do with the fungus growing on some of the rotting boards. However, I did not re injure my back, so I win!