I want a junk drawer for my yard.

You know we've been spending the last couple weeks taking care of some loose ends on massive project number #1 (aka our DIY house) that got put on hold when we decided hey, let's take on even more massive project #2 (DIYing our Mom's a duplex dubbed the Momplex).

After we poured the concrete sidewalks and a pad in front of the garage - what a luxury, sidewalks in remotish Alaska!!! - and then filled in around the sidewalks with top soil for new grass, there was one more thing that I desperately wanted.

I want to be able to drive up in my yard and not see any clutter.  I want to be able to come home and not feel like I need to hop out of the car and find somewhere to put kid toys and bicycles and garden hoses and wheelbarrows.  

Our yard needs a junk drawer!

So I thought, what if we built a privacy fence between the garage and house, and then when Mom says "Clean the yard!" it means throw everything over the fence.

Yes, I am the Mom.

I'll be throwing stuff over the fence too.

Now up here in remotish Alaska, there's not a whole lot of privacy fence building.  God kinda takes care of that with huge trees and most people own large parcels of land.  So this may be old stuff to you - but I'm pretty excited - today, I'm getting a junk drawer for my yard!

We had rented for $300 a day a skidsteer to help with the landscaping and it came with a huge drill bit that just fits on and gets a pin to hold in place.

We basically found the general spot we wanted each fence post to go.  Right about here .....

And then we start drilling!

And drilling ...

Now there's definitely going to be some shoveling involved in this operation, but we are going to get our $300 bucks out of that skidsteer.

So the Ram stops drilling and carefully brings the giant drill bit up.

Anyone who has every shoveled gravel will appreciate this .... count the shovel-fulls of gravel we don't have to shovel out ...

And then a little drilling mid air and the gravel is out of the hole!

And then after the holes are drilled, the Ram gets the flu.  So Grandpa Tim and I, we are on our own - and I've never built a fence like this.  Thankfully Grandpa Tim has.

So first we put the posts in next to the garage and house.  And then we attach the side posts plumb and level to the garage walls.  This gives us known points for our fence.  

And then we run a string line between the posts attached to the house and garage to make sure our fence is straight.  Center posts are placed in the ground plumb and square with the outside posts.

We are just using treated 4x4 posts, 10 feet long.

For the posts not being held up by the house or garage, we use scrap 2x4 boards to brace just right so we can backfill.

We backfill the post holes with gravel and they are set in the ground!

Now the fun part ... We get to build now!  

We use the laser level to mark all the post to the same height as the shortest post.

And the tops are cut off with a circular saw so all the fence posts now stick out of the ground the same height.

We'll be adding a gate in between the two fence sections, so we are just building two small fences here.  For the fences, we simply placed a 2x4 1 1/2" down from the top, attaching with pocket holes to the posts.

Then under the top board, we added a 2x4 on edge to support the top board.

Then we measured down exactly 72" and added the bottom 2x4.  The 72" part is important - that's because fence pickets are 72".  And I'm not cutting every fence picket down to size.

We use a piece of 1/4" plywood as a spacer.  Exterior wood will swell when wet, and some of the fence pickets are not quite as square as we'd like, so the little gap will give us a little wiggle room.

We just keep adding fence pickets spaced with the plywood spacers.  With three people, this went really fast.  

We also added another 2x4 about 2/3 the way up for extra support and just because it looks nice.

And then we did the same on the other side!

We will be adding a gate in the middle, or closet doors for my yard if you will!

And once the gate is in, I will stain the cedar pickets to match the treated wood, and then seal it all.  

I know you can buy those premade fence panels, but they were like $70-$80 each!  And you STILL have to put the posts in the ground and buy them ($$$).  For each of our fence sections, we used 

- 11 fence pickets

- 2 2x4x12 treated

For a grand total of $36 in materials for each fence section.  That's about half the cost!!!  Multiply that by a long fence, and you can do the math on why DIY is the way to go.

And of course, I've got your back.  Here's the step by step plans so you can build your own fence!