Backyard Fence Removal, Day 1

March 15, 2025

Well, we’ve had a fence situation in our backyard for… well, for quite some time. There were some strong winds last year that took down some panels. I braced things up with a few 2x4s on both sides, and had to leave them as-is.

The timing of this was really rough – it happened right before Liz and I relocated to Georgia for a few months (I didn’t hear about the insurance claim until after we were out of town).

By the time we got back, things were overgrown and we decided to wait. Things got busy, and before we knew it the weather had turned. So we decided to hold off until sometime in Spring of the following year.

Well folks, that day was today. There’s been some cold days, but some warmer days as well. And both Liz and I started to feel that Spring was nearing… and the time was now.

Rather than repair things, we assessed and decided we were going to tear the whole thing down and start over. And we had the (good? bad?) idea to do the removal and new fence by ourselves. And lucky you, you get to watch.

Liz, looking over our porch into our neighbor’s yard. I was working over on this side initially. It got much easier to cross over here, once we got a few more panels down.

First panel down.

Second panel down. And a big door, between our two backyards.

Got a bit of a ways to go (note the two 2x4s, holding things up).

Liz, working things from the top.

Slowly but surely.

We started stacking pickets along the side of the house.

Making pretty good progress. Getting into the swing of things, and moving a bit faster.

Another view of the progress so far.

Near the back, looking at the last panels and pickets left.

The piles have been growing.

Nearly there!

Liz, hauling pickets to the driveway.

We brought out some sawhorses for a temporary work station. We set the pickets, runners, kickboards and posts on them, to pull out and drive in any protruding nails.

If we had a dumpster, I doubt we’d take this extra step. But our plan is to throw out as much as we can with a Bagster. And if you’re going to play Tetris at this level, you’re gonna want your boards as clean as possible.

Surprisingly, we were able to remove all the fence material… and even got a few posts pulled out of the ground!

We used a bottle jack, and a series of 2x4s to slowly pull each one out of the ground. We struggled at first, but got better as we went along.

For the most part… we got each post up fairly high, but then had to lift the post together for the remaining 6″-12″, to really get the thing out of the ground.

It was definitely a strain, but I was quite surprised how many we were able to get done today (in addition to all the other work).