Power tools+ambition=fence!

When we purchased our house back in April we knew one of the big projects we wanted to tackle was to fence in the back yard so our dogs would have a place to play and we could enjoy the convenience of simply opening the door to let them out to use the bathroom in the mornings rather than having to take each one out individually on a leash. Since we have dads who know how to build damn near everything and we had zero experience with construction of any kind, they had planned to come over and help (aka build the fence for us) when they were free. Well it had been a couple months and since they weren't seeming like they were going to be free anytime soon and we're impatient, we decided to give it a try ourselves. After all, I really wanted to use some power tools! Here's the finished product...

View from the left side of our house. We designed it to where the gates would blend in and look like part of the fence.

View from the right side of our house. Because our lot isn't all flat back there we couldn't go with panels and instead did each piece of wood individually. It was time-consuming but I'm happy with the results!

We chose to go with a dog-eared stockade style. It's only a little over 4 feet high. Our goal was to build it just tall enough to keep the dogs in and not so much for privacy since we actually love our neighbors and frequently enjoy back-yard conversations and also didn't want to block our view. It won't be staying this color but since it's pressure-treated wood we have to wait a little bit before we stain it.

Overall I'm very impressed with our first big project especially since we were total amateurs! We have lots more work to do but I think this definitely built up our confidence. You can see in the above picture there is a little gap where the two fences meet, so to cure that we're going to cut a piece of wood to fit there and attach a platform for a birdhouse. The dead grass was caused by a combination of digging done for the fence posts and the result of having three dogs who all pee in the same spot, so we'll be seeding and watering soon to get it looking nice and green again! I'm just glad our yard is coming together, even if it did happen a little late in the season than planned :)