Here's another photo of the fence that Mark made. I'm not sure you can see it really well, but all of the hoops interlace with each other - one side goes in front of the adjoining hoop, and the other side goes behind the next hoop. The top and bottom horizontal pieces all have holes drilled into them that the hoops fit into. The original fencing was made pretty intricately, and he copied it exactly. There was cutting, bending, welding, grinding and drill pressing involved - and I think you can assume a fair amount of swearing!! It's about 42 inches tall, and each section is 7 feet long. He made enough sections to go from the garage to the side fence on the street side of our property and the entire width of the shoreline plus 2 gates - so a lot of steel involved!
Our house is 100 years old give or take a couple years, and our lot was filled so it's higher than the neighbors on both sides (basically our lot has a very gentle slope to the lake, and the lots on both sides of us have fairly steep hills with level areas at the lake). We have a retaining wall going down each side line to hold in the added dirt. There is very old fencing that was set in this cement retaining wall. We don't know exactly how old the fencing is, but I guess it could be argued that it may be the same age as the house - they could have added the fill at the time the house was built, and the fence is set into the retaining wall. The above photo shows the detail of the top trim piece on this old fencing. The bottom shows the wire detail. It's rusted, old and gnarly, but it has so much character that we didn't think twice about putting it back up when we had to replace one of the retaining walls a few years ago.
Gee - in a future post, I'll give the "garden fence tutorial" - test later, so listen up!!!!!
Gee - in a future post, I'll give the "garden fence tutorial" - test later, so listen up!!!!!
5 comments:
Nice! I love the trim. And admire the dedication! :)
Okay, I know nothing about working with metal; how did he get each piece bent so perfectly?
Hi Rurality - thanks - we get just a little anal about things sometimes - LOL - but sometimes it pays off!
Hi Trailhead - ah, the bender... The lengths of steel rod are bent using a machine called a bender. There used to be a company that made them here in Minneapolis - but now they're out of business (bought out by a company in Ohio). So when Mark started this process, he looked on ebay and found one in Indiana. It's a fairly large piece of equipment and heavy - so he actually drove to Indiana to pick it up one weekend!!!! He assures me we still saved tons by making the fence instead of buying more old stuff, but, seriously...
There won't be flowers blooming here for weeks yet, so maybe I'll have to post photos of all our wonderful fence making equipment! Stay tuned for further developments!!
Kris, thanks for visiting my blog--it let me find yours! I've enjoyed my visit and look forward to returning... and by the way, your husband does great work. The fence looks amazing!
Thanks blackswamp_girl. He's made a couple smaller fence styles for my gardens and some great tuteurs (not sure about that spelling) for tomato supports. This year I'm hoping we make some trellises. Of course, I always have way more ideas than he has time!!
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