White Picket Fence Fixing

Lord knows we've talked a lot about modifications we've made inside our house as well as on our deck, but we haven't spent much time talking about the front yard. Sure, I showed you how we prettied up our front porch with the planters, but what you don't know is that wayyyy back in December, a few days after buying the house, we took care of a major eye-sore, curb appeal killer...let's go back 10 months....

One of the most charming exterior features of our house is easily the  giant beast of a Christmas Tree white picket fence. Who doesn't love a white picket fence? I mean it's so "living the dream" American.   While we loved our fence it had some "issues" we didn't love so much. The first of which was a 3 foot wide arbor covered in rose vines complete with large painful thorns.

Rose vines had been removed before above photo was taken. 

This lovely arbor was the entry way onto our front walk from the street. It was awkward and undersized not to mention lethal with those thorns. It had to go and fast, we didn't need any of our visitors getting wounded trying to visit us! 

We knew we wanted to remove the arbor, but we had to consider what we wanted to put in it's place. As I said, the arbor sat right in front of the house, once removed the space needed to look neat and clean, not hacked up and crazy.  Plus the fence was built into the post of the arbor, so we couldn't just pick up the arbor and move it. We didn't want to start knocking it down too soon and then regret the way we went about it. After thinking things over we decided to utilize the parts of the arbor that made sense and demolish the rest. We decided to cut the arbor down, leaving only the front posts, which would be slightly higher than the fence itself to create the entryway onto the walk. 

 Brent broke out the saw-zaw and a few minutes later.......

ARBOR DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!

With the arbor down we began addressing the front legs of the arbor that were left. We picked up some pieces from Home Depot to help give the posts a more finished look. First we added a flat post cap directly on the post and then added a more decorative post cap on top of that. Brent's Dad and brother (recognize him with his shirt on??) were in town for the week helping us work on the house and helped install these pieces. 

The new pieces made the posts look like they had always been there. Brent added some white paint to the new pieces and white-picket-fence-issue number one was resolved. 

P.S. you may of noticed the photo above showcases a happy yard with green grass and flowers. This last step was completed this summer. The posts stayed two-toned for months...sorry neighbors ;) Better late than never!

How much nicer is this view now? 

While we had the saw-zaw out we decided to tackle picket fence short-coming number two. 

The fence ran down the side of our driveway all the way to the house with a little gate that opened onto the walk from the driveway. All very cute and charming, but this set up made the driveway an extremely tight fit for our cars.  Opening our car doors without it hitting the fence took major control and wayyy too much effort. 

Removing the fence completely wasn't an option. We had just de-arborfied it and we loved the curb appeal it gave our house. So, we decided to modify it some...saw-zaw style. The idea was to leave the fence untouched from the street side and down just a portion of the driveway, removing the part of the fence that was getting in the way of car doors.

Brent made a clean cut and carried the fence away. 

The little gate bit the dust too. Scott took an axe to it and it was carried away as well. A gate is no good if a large chunk of the fence is missing. Luke is smarter than that.....;)

Once it was all said and done, this modification MAJORLY opened up the driveway making life SO much easier. I know that sounds crazy, but it's the little things in life. Remembering to hold your car door every single time you came or went was just too much and made parking in the driveway a hassle.

This new set up works out much better and makes driveway parking much more enjoyable. Plus, our car doors still have all their paint. 

Some projects are big and glamorous and some are not. This one won't go down in the record books as the greatest thing we've ever done but we are darn proud of how we were able to problem solve our way through these little dilemmas without spending a lot of time or money. At the end of the day we still have a cute fence and a driveway we can park in without stress. Living the dream folks, living the dream. 

All photos are my own.