Mission Completed

When Emily convinced me to build her a fence I had NO idea how much time and effort it would take. She told me that I could put it up during my spring break (which was over a month ago). We were blessed to have a Ward service project to put posts in (Emily already posted about that). I will now take you through the remainder of our project which cost me countless hours and probably some letter grades in a few of my classes.

After the posts set it was my job to put up the vinyl slates so we could have a fence and not just a nice row of white posts. This was a very rewarding part of the project because in a short amount of time you could see a drastic change. Not all our posts were the correct distance apart so I got to measure and saw the slates so we could get a custom fit.
The next part of the fence project was to get the front gate finished. We had to put in two more posts for the part of the fence next to our house and assemble the gate. The kids helped us get the holes ready. When we were done with this our house looked really good from the street, but the work was far from over.

Because the very back of our property has a steep slope we couldn't complete the last 16 feet when we did the rest of the fence. Thus our fence was completely un-functional as the kids demonstrated daily by bolting into our neighbors yards. To complete those last 16 feet on both sides I first had to make a cinder block wall the fence could go on top of. Building a wall is no easy project and I had to build one on each side of our yard. I first had to dig a large trench which was framed with wood, build a rebar support skeleton and then pour cement.
One of the new skills that I developed was tying rebar. I found a new level of respect for steel workers who do this for a living. I had 4 long rebar pieces that ran horizontal through the trench that were tied together in a square and then vertical pieces to come out of the cement at specific intervals. This took a good deal of planning and I got many, many cuts from the sharp rebar and wire I used to tie it.
After the cement cured I had to build my cinder block wall. Luckily my planning paid off and the rebar matched with the holes in the blocks. I made sure everything fit together nicely and then I went to work teaching myself masonry. After a while the walls started to come together. We then filled the entire walls with cement. One side note is that the holes for the blocks were slightly smaller than the posts for the fence. I had to saw and grind down the blocks so the posts would fit. It ended up working nicely, but really every step of this wall building was laborious at best.
Now that the posts were in place and my wall was mostly finished I topped off the wall with capstones. Again I had to cut the capstones to fit around the posts. It took a long time to get things to fit well but I thought it looked good. Then I could finally finish the vinyl portion of those last 16 feet on each side of our back yard.
Here are some pictures of the final project. It only took me a month longer than I had originally planned but we are pleased with the results. I am so grateful for all the friends who helped me along the way. They too put in many hours, were sunburned, and cut and covered in blisters like myself and I really appreciate their service. I am especially thankful for George Baker who helped with the design and lent me tons of his tools which made the project possible. Without him I am sure the fence would have blown down by now. I hope this summer, even with me gone so much, that the kids will have fun playing outside and Emily will have the peace of mind that they are safe.