After living in the city for nearly ten years, my husband and I had enough of the noise, traffic and lack of privacy.
We wanted more space and some fresh air.
We found a really beautiful farmhouse surrounded by a sizable plot of land. We were able to afford the property because it had been left vacant for quite some time and needed a lot of repairs and renovations. Since my husband and I are both fairly handy, we hoped to handle the majority of the updates and issues on our own. I knew we could manage replacing windows, repairing the floorboards of the porch, installing new kitchen cupboards, painting and replacing light fixtures. I didn’t foresee any problems with tearing down the old fence that circled the property. At one time, I’m sure the fence was a beautiful addition to the property. When we moved into the home, the fence was falling down in many places and missing pickets. We kind of liked the idea of having a sturdy fence around the lawns to provide an area for the dog to safely run and play. After inspecting the existing fence, we realized there was no hope of salvaging it. We needed to totally remove it. My husband and I started on the project and found out very quickly that we needed some professional help. Many of the boards were rotted and infested with bees.The posts were cemented into the ground and impossible to pull out. A section of the fence was totally overrun with thorny vines. We worried about damaging hidden underground water and septic lines by digging. We hired a licensed fencing company to complete the removal and got an estimate for a new fence. Although we looked into all different materials, the fence is so extensive that anything but wood was simply too expensive.