Even though the house was in pretty awful shape when we bought it, I feel like we inherited some nice things. Especially in the garden. Despite needing to have the entire plot cleared and lawn laid, we did inherit some mature trees, a bomb shelter and a very sturdy fence.
We share a fence with neighbors on three sides. One neighbor had painted theirs red, one has theirs painted green and one has their fence in the same state as ours. (They have a lot of bushes in front of the fence, so no real need to paint it.) To match with at least one of the neighbors, we had a choice between green and red cedar. We had some cedar red fence paint that the previous owner left behind. But neither of us were that keen on it. I sold the red fence paint and picked up a 20-litre bucket of Ronseal One Coat Fencelife in Forest Green. Looking back at photos, it's fairly apparent that the fence needs some TLC.
The paint has been sitting in the garage for about a month, but I finally decided we just needed to get started. One night I wire brushed the fence that holds the garbage cans (bins). Then I painted it (with a large brush). Two coats and it looked like this.
Wire brushing the fence worked well, but took a lot of effort. The next morning we used the pressure washer to clean off a large portion of the fence, and let it dry all day. The pressure washer did the trick to clear off the moss and grime. That evening (once the kids were in bed) Niall and I headed out and painted a long stretch.
A few more sessions of pressure washing and painting and two sides of the fence were done.
The side where the neighbors have a green fence as well looks really good. The side with the cedar red looks a little odd when you look closely. Because of the slats, we couldn't really paint everything green because it would make the neighbors side look ridiculous. So we tried our best to paint 'our' side of the fence without causing problems for the neighbors. And the end result is a hodgepodge. (We kept trying to look over the fence to make sure we weren't dripping paint on the wrong side.)
The back fence took a lot longer. The large amount of vegetation, wood, rubble and weeds made it difficult to clean or paint. It took several rounds of clearing and runs to the dump before we could work on the back fence.
Finally! We had clear access to the fence, it was clean and dry.
I cleared most of the rubble, but kept behind these stones. I think we may be able to find a place to put the stones rather than take them to the dump.
The fence is almost finished. We ran out of paint today, and there's still one more panel that needs to be painted. But you can't really tell from this photo.
Still lots to do in the garden (and it's not like I know how to garden, but we're learning). Tonight I'm pretty happy the garden looks like this.
1 comment:
Impressive work! See how little time you guys spent from machine washing the fence against painting it by hand? Goes to show that you achieve more by using these things. I hope you guys can find some more work for your trusty washer!
German Zollinger @ TotalCleanEquip.com
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