Jeff and family visit for Mardi Gras, and we work on fence construction.

February 17-20

We looked forward to the visit from Jeff, Darla, and Elyse for our Mardi Gras blessing, and they arrived about 11pm on Friday, February 17. Jordan was very busy working as manager of her French Truck Coffee location in the busy Mardi Gras activities. Ashleigh is on a surgery rotation in her 3rd year of Medical School and is in Baton Rouge, only making a one day visit back to New Orleans during the Mardi Gras festivities.

We greatly enjoyed Sunday dinner together with Mark after church and it was about our only time for relaxed photos since we worked hard on the rebuilding of our storm-damaged fence. Jeff, Darla and Elyse had attended church with us in the morning and we had settled in for the nice dinner that Brenda had prepared.

Preparation for fence rebuilding

About a week previous to this , Rod with the help of neighbor Roger had taken down the first section of the fence, which was too damaged to be repaired. Mark came out on February 14 to put in new 4x4 posts as the first step of construction.

From the pile of pieces from the wrecked fence, Mark uses his portable power saw to cut strips for a bracing framework for the 4x4 posts. I would have puzzled about how to get the 4x4 posts up and plumb, but Mark with his extensive experience with not only construction but rapid construction, knew exactly what to do! He cut out two-piece bracing structures from the old fence boards and drove one piece into the ground and screwed the other to that piece and the post while I held a level on the post to make it vertical. With two such brace sets, we quickly had the posts in their holes and measured vertical.

The sudden strong wind from the storm had broken four 4x4 posts and slammed the fence into two close trees, breaking the top of it. We now were putting in new posts to concrete in place as the first step for the new fence section.

With the great idea of the two-piece braces, we had gotten the four new posts erected and plumbed. We then poured concrete around the posts, having previously put a shovel of dry concrete mix in the bottom of each hole. We were now ready for the next stage. With these posts in place you can clearly see how much the back of this section of the fence had been blown down. At this stage it was not clear whether we could salvage that back section or not. Mark had a friend who had a stack of the 8-foot fence boards we needed and was able to get them from him at about half price. He had also gotten 2x4s for the cross pieces.

Fence construction on Saturday, February 18

At this stage, it was not at all clear to me what kind of structure was needed to install the fence boards. But again, Mark knew exactly what to do. For the horizontal cross-pieces he cut to fit and then used 3" screws at an angle to mount them to the posts. Then to put angled cross-pieces at the bottom to accommodate the short bottom pieces he marked them at the needed angle and was able to cut them at that angle with his portable power saw and screw-mount them in the same way. Very impressive job, and he did it very quickly!

Jeff and Marty show up dressed for this cold clear morning and the fence project begins in earnest.

They had to put the top cross-piece in place and then we were ready for the first board. Mark had brought along his air stapler gun and enough hose for us to supply it from my air compressor down in the shop. We stapled the boards first to positiion them and then added rustproof screws because the staples had not been sufficient in the past.

The second board is put in place and we are off on our fencing project.

Moving along to ten boards and it is beginning to look like a fence. The boards are aligned with the middle of the bottom crosspiece as a guide and things are moving along.

Moving along rapidly with the top section of the fence and beginning to look at the filling in of the short section at the bottom.

As the fence stretched out, they screwed in a board on the bottom crosspiece to serve as an accurate giude for vertical positioning of the boards.

All the long pieces are now installed to the final 4x4, and they are moving back with the shorter boards that have to be angled at the bottom to follow the ground line.

As they progressed along the angled short boards, they set up several boards on sawhorses so they could mark and cut several at a time.

As they reached the very short bottom pieces, they clamped a group to cut several short pieces at a time.

A fantastic day of fence building, especially considering that this morning there were just four 4x4 posts in the ground here. We started about 8am and this photo is right at 5pm! Quite a day's work for this fence building crew. So we called it a day here and had supper and a game time around the table.

Raising the back section of the fence, February 19

As we had started on the front section of the fence yesterday, it was not clear whether we could salvage the back section which had been blown down.

We attached two come-alongs to trees and began trying to raise the fence to a vertical position.

We didn't know whether the fence would stay together, but started gently raising it.

With some patience we did get the fence to a vertical position. Then we got so busy bracing it and positioning it that we didn't take any more pictures.

We braced this fence section upright and tied it to the front section, and added a cross brace to hold it to the back yard fence. We added three new pieces of the fence wood at the junction with the fence we constructed the day before.

Adding four pieces of the old wood from the previous first section to replace broken boards, we were able to make a continuous fence down to the gap between the fences. We added lots of braces and screws to strengthen the system.

By the end of the second day we had the repaired and replaced fence in place. We were a bit surprised at how well it turned out to make a satisfactory fence system. Rod supplied tools and materials and backed up at various stages, but Mark, Jeff, and Marty made a great fence-building team. Mark came out the next week and added three strong post braces on the back side of the fence.

We gathered for Sunday supper and Marty joined us for another game session. Jeff, Darla and Elyse left at about 10am on Monday after our group hug and traditional family prayer. It had been a short visit, but very enjoyable and productive.