I spent a week replacing my old fence this May as my early-summer home improvement project.

Last year, I replaced my garden shed, you can see incidental pictures of the fence here and also here. I tore out the old chain-link fence and the posts; and sold the metal for scrap to a local recycler. The new fence is a six-foot wood stockade that completely surrounds the backyard. It's sealed with Thompson's Waterproofer/Clear protector, so it'll keep the color it has today with a little simple maintenance.

Here's a view from the lot across the side-street.



Here's the view down the alley: I planted some new hostas, day lillies, poppies, daisies, and columbines along the fence, but they won't come up for a little while.



My backyard is elevated a bit from the sidewalk, so I stepped it down at the corners of the lot. I like this detail quite a bit.



Coming back down the sidewalk...



Here's the matching stepdown detail in the front



The gate's got a self-closing spring, heavy-duty hinges, and a pull handle up nice and high for tall gentlemen like myself.



The inside of the gate is framed out in 2X4 PT lumber with an easy-to-tighten cable to keep it from ever sagging. There's a latch on the inside that I can reach from over the top of the fence, but I can basically lock the back yard up. The meter readers are gonna love me...



Here's the inside of the front stepdown. There's a little nook to the right there where I can keep my trash cans.



A view of the backyard. I've still got a mess in the back right corner, but have plans for re-purposing that lumber and know where to recycle the concrete.



While clearing out the brush and tearing out the old fence, we found a rose bush scraping by under the cover of weeds. She's tied onto a fan trellis now.



Here's the view from the other direction, from the grill pad back to the gate.



The garden is in the other corner, by the path heading down the side yard to where the shed is. There are four tomato plants, a bunch of peppers, green beans, and acorn squash.



And a cage for the blueberries. (Don't want birds eating them.)