Installation of the fence gates

We've been working on the fence for the last 2 days. Last night for the first time the dogs were able to run in the back yard!

Yesterday we finished the front right fence.






We covered the gate opening with plywood until we can get the gate built. The neighbor has allowed us to tie our fence into his house as the property line is about 1' from his house.

The top of the wall will be landscaped and I'm going to build a set of brick steps with some of our reclaimed brick. We're going to build 2 small gates instead of one big one in this opening. On the other side of this the bush that is in the way will be transplanted and we'll be building an arbor in between the bushes on either side.

We're also going to fence in the HVAC compressors.

The fence here will only be 3 1/2' high. You can see the hole in the foreground where the post will go. I'll build some type of small gate into it for access.

Today we worked on the main gates on the left side of the house.




We still need to finish the finials, install the handles, the bar that goes into the ground, and figure out some way to lock it from either side.

We were able to get a pretty seamless fit but I'm going to have to do a little reinforcing of the posts, the gates are pretty heavy. I'm going to use lag bolts to bolt the one post to the side of the house.

We're going to finish up a few things on the gates tomorrow morning then we're going to start in on the breakfast room floor... finally!!

Antique Door Hardware

Here's some of the antique door hardware we've picked up recently from E-bay, Craigslist, and antique stores.


There's more but some of it is already installed and I couldn't fit the rest in the picture.

White Bricks?

I found this in the backyard when we were building the fence.


At first I thought it was the same as the bricks used in the study mantle but this isn't as wide as those. I first noticed the bricks in the study mantle were white a few weeks ago. Some of the paint has flaked off exposing the bare brick. I've never seen white bricks before. Does anyone know more about this? I did a little research online, one site says white bricks were popular from about 1800 to about 1870 but the site is in England so I'm not sure how relevant that is to Georgia.

Speaking of bricks, these are in our backyard. (sorry for the bad angle, this is the only shot I have of it)


They weren't visible for the first few months we lived here because the grass covered them but with all the driving over them it's exposed them. At first I thought it was a foundation for something like an outhouse or smokehouse. It doesn't really look like a foundation though, it's just 2 uneven rows of bricks, not a square. I think it's also only 1 or 2 layers deep.

What it's starting to look like to us is graves. I've heard of graves marked with bricks before.
The one on the left is about 8' long, the one on the right is almost 7'. There's also another one thats much smaller in another part of the yard, it's about 5'. Has anyone seen anything like this before?

If it does turn out to be graves I'm not really sure what to do about it. It's right in the middle of our driveway. I don't exactly feel like driving over someones grave everyday. Moving them to another part of the yard is an option. I've been thinking of looking up companies that have ground penetrating radar but I'd hate to spend the money on something like that until I'm fairly sure they are graves.

More fence pics

Well we didnt get the fence finished today but we came close. We finished putting up the dog ears on the one section and we started the small section on the right side of the house.




Here is the small section on the right side of the house.

<-----Street Backyard------->

The fence is on top of a 4' old brick retaining wall. we've set the fence back a few feet from the wall to allow room for plants. There is going to be a 4' gate in this section of fence, you can see the opening for it right after the first fence section. To allow access to the gate we'll be removing one of the bushes, building a trellis between the bushes, and building a set of brick stairs at the wall.

Backyard fence update

We worked on the fence again yesterday in between the rain drops.





This section going down the left side of the house(from the front) is about 175' long. We're rushing to finish this section and the section that comes off the right side of the house. Once those are done we'll be able to let the dogs out instead of having to walk them all the time. We're hoping to get them done today.

The rest of the perimeter has chain-link and chicken-wire fences from the neighbors. I'll eventually be putting our fence up along those fences but that will have to wait. I really need to get back upstairs and finish the bedrooms so the floor guys can refinish the second floor.

Here's a nice panorama shot of about 3/4 of our backyard.