Hey, Guys! I have to say it’s feeling a lot more like spring around here. We finally had some nice warm sunny days. The eight inches of snow we had acquired last Thursday is nearly gone. I can see grass, finally! All these signs of spring mean one thing to us Allens, the new horizontal slatted fence will be getting installed soon, I am so excited.

I posted some fence inspiration a few months ago, and shared with you guys that we were dead-set on getting a new fence this summer. At that point we had just started talking about what we wanted, but hadn’t met with any actual real life contractors or made any real decisions. Since then we have come up with a full plan for our yard and have hired Fencein Deck to build us a really great horizontal slatted fence.

Fencein Deck seemed like a good fit for us. They are a very friendly team, they use quality products, and most importantly, they let me customize the crap out of a new fence. Our friends Nicole and Ripp used them last year for their new fence and couldn’t recommend them enough, it was an easy choice for us. BTW – Nicole and Ripp have a horizontal fence and it looks awesome.

We had a lot of concerns going into this whole fence thing. For one, here in Minnesota you have to have “the pretty” side of the fence face outwards, the posts need to be on the interior side of the fence. I understand why this is a rule, you don’t want to piss off your neighbors. But, selfishly it is kind of a bummer. Our fence guy had a plan though, this wasn’t his first rodeo. He is going to mill channels in the center of the posts – this will allow him to slide the horizontal slats right into the posts. It will be exactly the same fence from the exterior and interior. The posts will be placed six feet apart instead of the usual eight to ten. The shorter distance between posts will prevent the horizontal boards from sagging and warping. Yay for practical solutions!

The best news is that we are extending our yard! We have a concrete parking pad next to our two car garage. We don’t ever use it, it just sits empty all year long. We have decided to extend the fence to enclose the parking space thus creating a play area for the kids. Soon they will be able to ride their bikes, bounce balls, draw with chalk, and play with trucks back on the repurposed parking pad. You might have noticed in the drawings that we aren’t extending the fence the full length of the garage. The reason is simple, we needed to save a little room to have space to pile snow in the winter months.

I have no idea how this concrete slab will function in the future, but while the kids are young it will be good for them to have a safe space to play. We are enclosing the parking pad with two large gates. The gates will meet in the center of the pad and will open inward. We have allowed ourselves to have options for how the space function further on down the road. It is highly likely that one day the kids will be teens, and they probably won’t give two craps about having a space to ride their big wheels. In the future we could remove the concrete and add more lawn space to our yard, we could keep the concrete, build a pergola and make ourselves a new patio, or we could make it back into a parking space. Who knows what it will be, I’m just glad it’s getting fenced in and is increasing our useable outdoor space!

We have a rental property on the north side of our house (the left side on the above drawings). Because of the ever changing neighbors, we are going to build a six foot fence on that side of the yard. Most importantly I wanted our privacy fence not to make us feel like we were prisoners in our own backyard. I wanted the fence to feel open, airy and pretty. I was able to design my own fence accommodating those needs. The fence is made up a simple alternating pattern consisting of boards and spaces of varying sizes. The slats have spaces of 1” and 1.5”. The boards range in size from 3-6”. When it’s all said and done the fence will look really pretty and be a nice backdrop for the garden.

The south side of our yard will remain a four foot fence. The fence will be identical to the lower part of the 6 foot fence. Our neighbor to the south is also getting in on the fence action, together we will be fencing off the alley side of the yard with six foot gates (this is by the parking pad). He will continue the gates, fencing in the space between the corner of our fence and the edge of his garage. This is mainly for security. We want to keep all the riff raff out, and the kids in.

We signed up with Fencein Deck early in the “fence season”. Because of that we are on the top of the fence list! I really wanted the fence to be installed before any of the perennials got to be too big. We should be having our fence installed sometime in the next week or two depending on how fast the ground thaws. I am really excited, and can’t wait to share more as we get closer. Spring is real, you guys!