Fence Me In

Our house is situated oddly. Part of it is that we're at the top of a pipe stem (a phenomenon that I've only ever seen in Northern VA - basically a long private drive) and part of it is that our lot consists of just enough room for our house, a little bit of "yard" and the cliff, which Tim refers to as "the hill." This is said with considerable irony, as this "hill" requires the wearing of cleats and careful footing should you desire to do something nutty like walk on it. Mowing it has been a particularly fascinating task for him since we moved here (though for a while the HOA was including the hill in their mowing of the common area next to us. Sadly, they stopped this about two years ago and Tim has had to begin braving the hill yet again.)

Because of the odd situation, however, and the fact that the dogs did just fine on the electronic fence, we never really saw the need for an actual physical fence, other than the odd time or two when we channeled our inner grouchy neighbors and felt like yelling at the kids to get off our lawn of course.

Still, now that the kiddo is running about madly here and there, having a place outside for the mad running to take place seemed like a good idea. And so we began pricing fences. The major fence company in the area (honestly, if you drive around you see their placards on the majority of fences) came out to give us a quote and I had to stop myself from laughing at the poor guy. I also had to check the impulse to ask if he was serious. Because his quote was about 3 times what I had as my mental ballpark (based on some scouting at Lowes online for do-it-yourself material costs plus what I figured was reasonable for labor.) The next company we had out was closer, though still about $600 more than I had figured on. The third company was just about in line with the 2nd. So, my ballpark was off (guess I don't know what "reasonable" for labor is.)

My sister had used the 2nd company for their fence, so we saved their estimate and moved on, putting it in the "someday soon but not today" file.

Uncle Sam was nice to us this year when April 15th rolled around, so we decided that, in addition to restocking the baby fund, we would go ahead and do the fence. So we submitted the plan to the HOA who after more time than I felt reasonable told us to go ahead (ah the gears of bureaucracy) and so we called up the fence company and gave them the go ahead.

Friday, they showed up at 7:15. 3 guys, a truck full of lumber and concrete, and a manual post hole digger. By 8:30 the posts were in. The whole thing was up - even on the killer hill - by 1 and there was no sign that anyone had been here other than the beautiful fence now surrounding that which we loosely consider our backyard.

The boy loves running around out there. The dog is rather irritated that we've obstructed her view.