Why I Oughta...

Over the past few posts about our fence , I showed the posts being installed and talked about what the fence was going to do in terms of framing up our backyard .  Unlike our first fence in Elmhurst , the crew putting our fence in this time dug each of the posts by hand.  I'm not sure if that is just how they roll or if it had something to do with the posts we selected? Because we're planning on staying in our #NewOldFarmhouse for quite some time, after talking with the team at Classic Fence, we decided to upgrade to steel posts instead of the traditional 4x4 cedar posts.  The steel posts we selected are called Postmaster posts from Master Halco . They're specifically designed for wood fences and allow for the attachment of cedar rails on the sides and accept planks on the outside and inside to basically 'cover' or mask the steel post in it's entirety. Here's a look at a few of the posts that were installed in our #newoldbackyard.  The one on the le

Last week, I posted a BF (before fence) photo of the #newoldbackyard and here above is an in-progress look at the fence posts going in the ground.  The above photo is clickable, but here is a link to the Google Photos version where you can zoom in and scroll around.  This is the second fence that we've installed and I documented almost the exact same point in installation from the first time .   Check it out here from seven years ago . If you look closely, you'll notice the posts aren't traditional 4x4 cedar posts.  We opted for steel posts as an upgrade this time over the standard cedar posts.  They cost a bit more, but they perform much better and will last much longer.  I'll post something on the posts themselves in the coming days. The fence is one of the first steps in the evolution of the backyard.  Once it is finished being installed, I can move on to planting some of the trees and then move on to deciding on some of the locations of the landscape beds

Via RealCedar.com I came across this pavilion on the RealCedar.com site and I'm posting it here so I can later reference it when the time comes to think about such a structure in our #newoldbackyard.  Those of you who have been following along for years might recall that we had a pavilion at our old place.  All the way back in April of 2010, I posted the original inspiration photo here on the blog .  That one was anchored off a structure (garage in our case) and came to life over a series of posts .    The one you see above has some modern touches - like the horizontal slats, lights and some of the flat cuts - and is unanchored to another structure.  The slats remind me a lot of the raised bed planters that I posted about over the weekend.  The simple, single-plane roof is interesting to me in that it requires less framing work.   The #newoldbackyard is much bigger than our old one, so we have space to do a few things.  Pizza oven.  Greenhouse.  Sports court.  Veg