A big hackberry tree fell on our roof early this spring. There wasn’t much damage to speak of, but I needed to remove a small stretch of chainlink fence so the stump grinding machine could do its thing.
I took the opportunity to replace the chain link with a wooden fence and, at the same time, move the fence up, effectively adding more space to the back yard. I managed to go low-cost on the building. The local bigbox hardware store had a bunch of rather decrepit fencing sections on clearance sale. I would never actually put those fence sections up, but I bought enough sections to save enough good pickets to build my fence. This is some of the leftover fence with pickets that didn’t make the cut:
My fence rails and gate are built from cedar studs salvaged from a remodel a couple blocks away. Beautiful boards, I’m planning on using the handful I still have to build an outdoor bench with a hinged top to hold my recycle bin. Wood was very straight and true- building the gate was a dream. Very sturdy while being low weight. The gate opens and closes easily with one finger, no sagging or binding.
My post toppers are hand made, cut from 5/4″ deck board and assembled with screws and high quality glue:
Project cost was was pretty small- New items included the 4×4 wood posts, hinge and gate hardware, concrete, and screws to attach the pickets. The cedar board was a salvage find, the post toppers were made from leftover 5/4″ board, and the pickets were very cheap, being a salvage job from some cut rate fence leftovers. All in all, the finished project is not too shabby:
