Fencing the Issue

I live in what could be called an “up and coming” neighborhood. In 5 years or so, it’ll hopefully be a hub of artists and progressive families–now however, it’s still a wee bit sketchy. My next door neighbor is a really cool, 30-something architect who I’ve befriended. Down the street is his friend, who matches the same description. Conversely, the duplex behind me is inhabited by very a large family who enjoy parking their 9 cars on their front lawn and playing “oom pa” music (on 11), at all hours of the night. We also have a resident schizophrenic who when not pacing the street, finds my front yard the superb place to sit down for a smoke while watching the same two-tone, primered Nissan drag race down the road every day. So, to provide my kiddos with a backyard and safe area to ride their bikes, while also creating refuge from some of the above aforementioned, I decided to have a huge fence built arounbd what I now refer to as, my “crafty compound”.

Lately, I’ve been really into the corregated metal and cedar fence combo, so I hooked-up with this local designer, Eric Billig, to see what we could do with the budget I had. It was a big job, since the entire place was either surrounded by a 1′ picket fence (what could have possibly been the purpose in bulding that?) or cement embedded chain link (ick). See below…

After the boys demolished our old fence…

Eric and his trusty side-kick Sam, built this one, including a gate to enclose the car port:

Oh, and since my neighbor and I thought it was a bit sad to completely seperate our two properties, we had an adjoining bar built so that we can share afternoon cocktails.

Now, we just need to go outdoor bar stool shopping–T.G.I.F!

Vickie