Building a Privacy Fence | 58

What's up guys, I'm Zach from Workshop Edits and welcome to my backyard. In today's project, I wanna take you through how I built and installed a privacy fencing on top of my backyard brick wall over the course of a single weekend. All right, so before we get into the build, let's just talk a little bit about my project in general and how I went about planning it and how I landed on the final design of what ultimately turned out to be a really cool aesthetic and beautiful privacy fence in our backyard. So we've been going through a lot of renovations back here, the biggest ones being painting this block brick wall to be this dark grayish blue color, which really helped make the backyard look pretty. We removed a bunch of trees and we laid sod. And the biggest thing that we noticed was once those trees were removed, it really opened us up to being exposed to our neighbors, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it gave us an opportunity to then look around and figure out what kind of privacy fence we wanted to install. So after doing lots of research and considering the budget that I was working on, which was trying to find a solution for under $1,000, I landed on this redwood lattice fence that you can purchase at pretty much any big box retailer, as well as using these pressure treated four by four posts that would anchor the material to the brick wall and form a really good, secure, long lasting solution. So my backyard would have two walls that we were gonna be installing this privacy fence on. This wall over here, which was about 55 feet long, and then the wall behind me, which is about 40 feet long. So designing this, we figured out that we would need 12 of these eight foot long lattices that would help pretty much span the entire border of it. So with that said, let's go into the garage and we're gonna start this project off by preparing the four by four posts that are gonna be anchored to the brick walls and hold up the red lattice pieces. Let's do it. All right, so to actually attach these fasteners to the brick wall, I'm using these three and three quarter inch screws from Tapcon. I did a lot of research on it and these seemed like the best solution for it. They can be drilled directly into concrete and it's nice. They actually come with this five and a half inch masonry bit, so it's perfect. You kind of have everything you need here. So these are rated for pressure treated lumber. They are rated for outdoors, of course, and they are rated to drill into concrete blocks and bricks and they can be hollow. So I think they're gonna be perfect. I'm gonna put a link in the description just in case you wanna check these out for whatever reason. I'm gonna want to eventually use my impact driver to drill those into the bricks when we actually fasten these. So I picked out the socket wrench head that fits this perfectly. And what I wanted to do is just make sure that this wasn't wider than the holes that I was about to drill, because I wanna be able to actually get this thing all the way in and tighten it. So I have this three quarter inch Forstner bit. We'll see if it's the fastest way to do it. I also have a spade bit, so we'll go ahead and drill these. And if there's a faster way to do it, then I'll change bits as we go. I have all of the four by four posts on my outfeed table, which ironically all fit, which is great. I'm gonna mark out those locations that we just talked about. And then I'm going to pre-drill all those holes so that when we take them back to the backyard, all the holes are drilled and ready, and we can mount these to the bricks. So let's do that. One other thing, I'm gonna use some blue tape just to mark out how deep I want this drill bit to go. The screws are pretty big as is, so I don't wanna overdo it. So this'll just help me save a little bit of time. All right, so the way that this is gonna work is I'm gonna start in each corner of my yard and then work my way inwards. My yard meets at a corner that is where a bunch of other yards meet. So I think it makes sense to start in the corners that are most kind of visibly exposed, and then I'm just gonna work my way over. So I'm gonna start by putting one of the posts up, and then I'm just gonna use a clamp to hold that in place. And I'm gonna drill out those little holes that will accept the screws using that masonry bit. And then I'm just gonna attach these posts one at a time. And I'm gonna do it one at a time just to make sure that I get the spacing correct between each of the lattices. So let's go ahead and do that. And if you're curious, these are two foot by four foot redwood lattices. I got them at Home Depot, but I'm sure you can get them at Lowe's or any of your other big box stores. They're about 35 bucks a piece, and I looked into it, and it's a lot cheaper just to buy these than to try to build something like this on your own. So we're gonna go ahead and get these hung up. All right, so I just got done hanging up the lattice along that fence. The next step is to do this back wall that I share with my neighbor. Now, what you'll notice is there's already a privacy fence that extends about 25 feet that way. I already spoke to the neighbor. They're totally cool. If we remove that fence and replace it with our lattice, that way it looks nice and clean and everybody has their privacy. So we're gonna go ahead and demo that and then get home with the build. There are birds everywhere out here today. All right, so I wanna just quickly go through the process of how I'm setting each of these posts. So to start, these are pressure treated four by fours. They are rated for ground contact so I can just mount them on the ground and flush up against the wall, and I don't have to worry about fungus or rot or any of that stuff. Just make sure you buy pressure treated lumber if you're doing something like this and you plan on mounting these posts to the wall and also touching the ground. So when I go to mount the post, I've just been doing them one at a time. I roughly put it in place. Then I go and grab my lattice and I move it into place just to make sure everything is lining up perfectly. Then I'm temporarily gonna use a squeeze clamp just to hold it there. Then I'm gonna check for level. Now I'm gonna make sure that it's flush up against the wall. Now that I know the post is in place, I'm gonna take the drill with the masonry bit that was provided, feed it through the hole, and just mark exactly where the screws are gonna go. I'm gonna do that for this hole and for the bottom one. Now that those are drilled, I can temporarily remove the post and then finish drilling out the pilot holes for the wall. This thing isn't quite long enough to reach all the way through so that's why I'm doing it this way. Now that the holes are drilled, I'm gonna take two of the screws into the holes that I just created and I'm gonna pre-drill them. I'm gonna drill them in just deep enough so that the other side is poking out. That then is gonna allow me to take this post and line it up with the holes that I just drilled. Then we can permanently fasten it. With the post securely in place, I'm now going to place a temporary screw in this beam that's gonna allow me to mount the lattice on that side and rest on this side and then I'll come back and I'll finish attaching it to this post. My yard has these brick extensions. I think this wall is really old and then these were added later to help stabilize it so I have to work around these so I know that my fence is gonna have to sit above it right here so I'm gonna go ahead and mount my screw level or above with that and I'm just eyeballing this. One additional thing, this is redwood. It's pretty soft but I did do a test off camera and I found that the wood was splitting when I didn't pre-drill a hole so I'm just taking my speed square with each one, putting it in place, measuring two inches down. That's an arbitrary number. You can do it wherever you want. I'm just doing it at two inches for consistency and then marking and pre-drilling the hole out. I'm also just pre-drilling my screws into the redwood lattice. That way, when I get it up and mounted where I want it, I can quickly just drive it into the post and every time I get one side mounted, I go to the other side and I check for level and then I drill in that last screw. All right, so everything is hung and I think it's looking really good so the next thing I wanna do is go around to each post and measure and mark two inches above the top of the lattice and cut all of these posts to their final height. That way, I can go back and add end caps onto them. It's gonna really kind of bring the whole look of the fence together. Now, I'm gonna do that using my speed square and a circular saw and then because my saw isn't big enough to make it through these four by fours, I'm gonna come back with the reciprocating saw and just finish off those cuts. All right, so all of the fence posts are now trimmed to their final size. Now, I'm gonna go around to each of the 14 posts and I'm gonna install these redwood caps that I got from Lowe's. They're like three bucks a piece and they're just gonna add a nice aesthetic look to each of the posts and kind of complete the design of the fence. So what I need to do is go around and just use a series of tools to make sure that the tops of each of those posts is perfectly flat. I'm gonna be using my electric hand planer and then my orbital sander, but you could also just use a belt sander if you have one of those or an angle grinder with a flap disc, but I think using the tools that I have is gonna be the quickest way to do that. So we do that on all the posts, then we're gonna get these screwed in and then we're gonna put some finish on this. All right, so we are on to the last portion of the build. The caps are in place, everything build-wise is good to go, so I'm just going to add a finish to this. There's a ton of options that you could do for this. I'm just looking for something that is going to protect against UV rays and also help protect the material against moisture and rain and things like that. I'm in Southern California, so tons of sunlight, not a whole lot of rain, but this stuff will help protect that long-term. Apparently one coat of this is all you need and that gives you four to six years of protection for fence. So I think it's gonna be the perfect options. This is Thompson water seal in autumn brown. I think that autumn brown is just gonna match the color of the pressure treated posts a little bit better. So now you can apply this using a brush or a paint roller or a foam brush. I finally bought an HVLP sprayer system, so I'm gonna use that because I think it's gonna go a lot quicker, but you don't need that to complete the project. So we're gonna load that up and we're gonna put some finish on this and then call this project done. Let's do it. All right, so that is gonna wrap it up for this project. Before I end the video, I do just wanna talk a little bit about budget. So as I said in my introduction, I wanted to build a privacy fence that would be weather resistant and stand up to the elements and last a really long time, but also have a really pretty aesthetic to it to go not only with the new look of our overall backyard, but also match this blue grayish brick walling. And I think the final result came out great. Now I was trying to come in or under $1,000 and the total cost of my project ended up being around $750. And I'm just gonna list all of those costs right here so you could see how that was broken down. You could also look in the description to see all the materials I used and get a sense of how those costs add up. Everything is going to be contingent upon where you're located and what materials are readily available to you, as well as how large of a backyard you're actually gonna be installing that fence for. So again, thank you so much for watching this video. I hope you learned something. I would love it if you'd subscribe to the channel for future videos, and I'll see you guys next time on Workshop Edits. Thanks.