The fence between Ashbourne House and my next door neighbour left a lot to be desired, but wasn’t exactly a priority to replace. Storm Eustice changed that as the wind proved too much for the various rotten timbers and took down more than a few of the old corrugated metal panels. I finally got around to ordering in materials to replace it with a closeboard fence and set about tackling the job after watching Charlie DIYte’s Video a few times.

Initial progress was slow. Digging the holes, propping the posts and concreting in place seemed to take forever. I painted the lower section of each fence post in bituminous paint in the hope it will help the posts last a little longer. With the holes dug to a depth of 600mm and the first post concreted in place, I set up a laser level aligned to the arris rail notch and used this to line up the remaining posts. Once at the right depth and vertical in both axes, I propped each in place by screwing some wooden supports to pegs hammered into the ground. This was then left in place for the cement to go off sufficiently to hold them securely.

Fixing the gravel boards, top and arris rails went much quicker, if perhaps a little slower than if I’d been more accurate with making the post spacing exactly match the 3m rail length so I didn’t need to trim each one. But once I got onto the featherboard installation, things really took off. Especially as I had used this as an excuse to buy myself a new toy.

I made up a jig using a piece of gravel board and a couple of pieces of 50x25mm timber. This helped ensure consistent overlap and alignment of each feather board as I offered it up to the one before and nailed in place. This bit of the job was very satisfying with a much more visual change happening very rapidly.

With the main run of 6 foot fence complete, enough of the dilapedated fence had been replaced for now. I still have the materials to drop the height down to a 4 foot fence to bring across the front of this side of the garden where it runs along the lane, but I have yet to decide where to put the gate so will come back to this once I’ve made some more progress on the barn.