Yesterday I had the day booked off work and unlike many people I like to be busy on a day off and see it as my opportunity to have a whole day to get things done around the house and garden, so what did I get up to?
Fence Repair
At the beginning of the week we’d had a big storm which was the subject of a great amount of news and scaremongering but it came and went and the only damage sustained at my house was that a fence had blown down which was due to the partially rotten wooden posts snapping. I’d noticed some wiggle on the posts previously and the high winds were the final blow (pun intended) and three posts came down with a fence panel and a gate. I took the photo below and it wasn’t long until it properly collapsed.
Due to the dark nights, it’s impossible to get work done in an evening so a day off in the week gave me the time to get this job done properly.
New posts or repair spurs? As these posts had been set into concrete there were several options.
- Dig out the concrete and start from scratch.
- Did out the rotten wood and insert a new post.
- Use a repair spur to add a new post on top of the snapped off post.
I discounted the first option as it wasn’t feasible, and then had to do both the other options. One post was so rotten that I was actually able to dig out all the timber from the hole using a chisel and was able to insert and set a new post in the old hole. The other two posts had snapped off but the timber in the hole was of sound quality and tough as anything and so for these I used a couple of metal repair spurs from Homebase. Once the posts were in then it didn’t take much to get the panels back in place and rehang the gate.
It’s jobs like these that I really should’ve done as soon as I noticed the posts were near their end but sometimes you need a little push by mother nature to get things done.
A New Fence
As I mentioned in this post, my garden is divided into various areas, and so whilst I was buying wood for the repair job I also bought some new trellis fencing panels from Wickes to divide my corner gardening plot off from the front garden.
This was a fairly easy job as I was able to put the fence where I wanted and setting the posts was nice an easy.
I went for trellis as it was cheap and I’m hoping I can get some climbers going up it and making it part of the structure of the garden. It also provides a clean divide of areas and means I can concentrate on weeding and prepping the area and have a definite line to stop at.
As you can see in the photo above it’s a bit of a state but won’t take long to clear. On the other side of the fence you can see the area that I’ve partially covered in prep for laying turf in spring. I ran out of the weed control sheet but have finally ordered some more and will get the rest covered soon to stop more weeds growing.
Anything else?
I did have a few other jobs to do around the house and before I knew it the day was almost over in time for a well earned stint in front of the telly.