Move Old Sections of Fence How to Build a New Fence on a Hill Fence Makeover Pt. 3

All right, welcome back. Today is now part three of my fence project, and today I'm showing you how I moved the old fence panels from these posts to the back of the yard, and then how I created a new section of fence that goes up the hill to connect the old to the old to the new. Hope you guys stick around and see how we did this. All right, so before we go too far, I want to give you a quick look at where we're at currently in the project. So you can see the fence on the right hand side here was the new fence that I built in part one. Then as you get further back, you can see that I have the gate installed that we did in the last video in the part two video, and then today we're going to move that inside interior fence or my old fence back to the new posts that are in the back of the yard so that we can gain a whole lot more space. So as you've seen in some of my previous videos, the first step for me was marking out where my fence was going to go with a string line, and that's where this part of the project really started. As soon as I knew where the fence was going to go, I needed to figure out how many fence panels I was actually going to use. I did this by first measuring the width of each one of my fence panels, and you would think that they were all the same, but they really weren't. And now what you're looking at is my my set of plans. In the lower right hand corner was my first draft of all of my measurements for all my panels, and then the graph paper represents kind of my way of cleaning it up and showing where I'm going to be putting all of my fence posts, listing out where each old panel is going to fit on the new fence. Then once I knew theoretically where every section of fence was going to go, I marked out on the ground those measurements that I took and started drilling holes with this auger. This is a nine inch auger, and all these holes were drilled to at least 36 inches deep to get below the frost line. Then I started off installing the post starting with the corner post, and there's one unique thing about the back side of this fence here is that it's not going to be 100% straight because I want to follow the crest of the hill, and the hill wasn't completely straight. So I installed the corner post, I installed this mid post right here in the middle, and then it takes me over to the new section that I installed earlier. And really I installed these posts the same way that I did in part one, so if you really want to see a detailed description of how I put these posts in and the way that I did this, I would definitely go back and watch part one so that you can see that, but I followed really the same process as before and put all these guys in. After all the posts were put in, I did something that I should have done before to make my life a whole lot easier, but I came back with a chainsaw and I cut up all these trees about six to eight feet above the ground just to clear everything out so that I had a whole lot more room to work in here. And that would have been nice to do earlier, but I'm a person that really does like trees and I wanted to keep as much tree coverage as possible back here, but really I needed some space to work in and space to put all these fence panels on. The next step for me was to install a string line, and this string line tells me where the top stringer is going to be on the new sections of fence that I'm creating, as well as where the old sections are going to attach. Then I went by and marked off where that string was on each one of these posts, and using a circular saw, cut the post to height. Then for the sections that I'm building new, I started attaching the stringers, and yet again it's the same exact way that I did in part one. Started off with the top, moved down to the middle one, and put on the bottom one, and it worked exactly the same way whether they were horizontal or going at a slant downhill. Installing the pickets on the top of the hill were pretty routine because things were pretty straight, so I went ahead and attached those just like before. Air nailer, my spacing block, and kind of height jig, and I had to cut some of them to make sure that they fit because the ground is at 100% level here, but everything went pretty well. I followed that same process attaching the pickets on the outside. The one thing that you can't see here is I installed all the ones that are going down the hill with screws, so I had some options on the way that I could make this work, but for me, I installed them with screws in the thought that I was going to remove them and cut them again, and I know that sounds crazy, but it worked out really well. To figure out how I was going to cut the bottom of these pickets, I clamped a 2x4 onto the bottom of the pickets and marked that straight line on the bottom of these pickets, and at this point I know I could have gotten out a circular saw and just used that straight line and used a circular saw and cut it straight, and I've done that before, and it's worked really well, but for this scenario, I decided to remove all the pickets, but before removing all the pickets, I marked off where they are, so right now they're held in with two screws just very loosely, and I'm marking off each side of the picket so I know exactly where they're going to go, and I don't have to think about it later. Then I took each picket off, took it over to the miter saw, and cut the exact angle that was on the bottom. Then once that angle was cut, they were pretty easy to install. I had the jig on the top to tell me where the height was, and then I had the marks on the 2x4 to tell me where each individual picket went. Each picket was numbered, so it went back in its original place, and I'll be honest with you, it probably took a little bit more time than using the circular saw, but the overall result was really good, minus one little mistake that I'll show you. Then I repeated that same process to the other side. Then this was where I needed to start looking at my plans again to make sure that I was taking each old section and putting it into its proper place on the new post that I installed, because each section has a specific spot that it'll fit best, hopefully. Then to remove the old sections of fence, I used a straight or rip claw hammer and a pry bar. By now these sections are probably around 20 years old. The pickets are made of cedar, and the stringers are made of 2x4 pressure treated lumber connected to pressure treated 4x4s for the post. They're connected to the post by what looks like two framing nails, and I'll be honest, the sections of fence are in pretty good condition, but after 20 years these boards have gotten a little dry rotted, especially at the bottom if they've kind of settled down towards the ground and got wet, and then some of the boards kind of have a styrofoamy feel to them, so you just have to be careful with them, but overall they're going to work really good in the back of my yard and save me a little bit of money. Then with a little help from my dad, we reinstalled these panels on the new posts. The big thing that we needed to do was make sure, one, we got the right panel in the right space in between the right two posts. Then we lifted the panels up so that the top stringer was flush with the top of the new post, and then sometimes we had to rack them back and forth left and right to get the inside picket to sit inside of those two posts. So you'll see that we're pushing on these things and moving them around and stuff like that, but overall, because I took the time to measure them out beforehand and really took my time when I was putting in these posts to get, or tried to get them in there as accurately as possible, most of these fence panels fit in really well with less than a half inch or an inch of difference that I had to, you know, adjust them or move them around. So they worked out really well. When I'm installing these old panels, I'm using three-inch decking screws. Like I said before, they were originally installed with nails, but those nails were rusting and all kinds of stuff, so I decided to make new holes or use new holes and use screws. So if I ever wanted to take these down and build all new sections because I didn't like them, it would be a whole lot easier this way. Plus, I think these are going to be held on a little bit stronger. Removing some of the old panels was easier than others. Some pulled right off, and then others decided to fight me a little bit. Sometimes I had to resort to the Sawzall, but they all got removed one way or another, and they were still usable. Then we kind of got in a rhythm and kept repeating that process. Then the last thing that I needed to do was build a new section in the back corner. This one's on a steep slope, and I didn't have a section of fence that I could rack hard enough to get it to make this slope. So just like I did before, put in a kind of a new section of fence here as well. So it took less than a day to move all the old sections, build one new section, and then put in the last small gate in the back of the yard. At this point, you can see that I have a few sections that I still need to move, but I have a fully completed fence that goes around the outside of my yard, and we can let the dogs back out. All right, so at this point, all the rest of the sections have been taken down, and I just have those kind of stockpiled behind my fence. We might have a plan for those in the future, but they came down just like the rest of the sections, and now really the only thing that I have left is the posts. So I have complete fence around the outside and then just a bunch of posts in the middle, and to be honest, I'm not in really any hurry to take them down or to pull them out. I could have pulled them out in a few different ways, whether I used a floor jack or some kind of lever to pull them or force them out, but I'm really not in any hurry. They're going to wait until next year. So next year, I will redo the last side of my fence that hasn't been done yet. It's standing, and it holds the dogs in, and it provides privacy, but other than that, it's pretty bad. Some of the posts are heaving out of the ground pretty far. They're leaning out and in and all over the place. Earlier this year, I did a drain project over there with my neighbor and put a French drain in along that side of the fence, and that's really kept that swale area a whole lot drier, and I think that that's going to keep those posts from moving around a whole lot. So now I finally feel comfortable enough where I can replace that side of the fence too, but that's a future video coming next year, and when I do that section of the fence, then I will take all these posts out. I'll have that mini bobcat with the auger again, and the plan is just to try to rip these out with that bobcat as well, because I know all of these have concrete on them. I don't know how much concrete. Could be 6, 12, 24. I don't know. So that'll be something that we get into next year, but overall this project worked out pretty well. I really like the way that I did this, minus the crazy questions that I got from my neighbors, like why the heck do you have two fences, because I did this project in a certain order so that I never had a period of time where the dogs could get out or roam free. I ended up building the new sections around the old, put in the gates, and everything was ready to go where all I had to do was move the old sections out to the outside, where there was only one day where we had an open fence. So it worked out pretty well, and I was pretty happy about that. The other thing that worked out really well was the measurements. I have to say, the planning of this went pretty well, where I was able to line up those posts pretty accurately, and then the old sections that I moved to the new post fit really darn well. I did have to move some of the inside pickets either out or in a little bit to shove them in there, but overall I was pretty happy. So the part that I'm doing now will come here very shortly in a future video is staining the fence, and I thought staining the fence was going to be crazy difficult. If you think about doing it with a brush or roller, that would be insane. I have a buddy who owns a painting company and let me borrow his paint sprayer, and I'll let you know. I'm not done yet, but it's going pretty well. So that'll be here in a future video. So if you did like the project, I encourage you to hit the like button. It definitely helps the channel. If you want to see what's coming next, I encourage you to subscribe. But other than that, I hope to see you guys in another video.