More fence work and a sad day.

Location, Home, CA

I spent Tuesday and Wednesday cleaning out the old post holes. Two of them were fairly easy to clean out using a sharp edged digger and a vacuum cleaner. The holes are 2 feet deep but only about 4 inches on a side wide. The third hole had a hard piece of old post stuck in the bottom which took me forever to get most of it out.

Because of the size of the holes I decided to install metal posts which allowed me to get more cement around them than would be possible with wooden posts. Unfortunately, metal posts and the hardware to go with them are more costly by a lot than wood. Also, the termites will break their teeth on the metal instead of feasting on wood.

I cemented in the posts on Thursday and today I added the cross stringers. For this fence I used three stringers because of the possible wind load and also because the boards that make up the fence are thinner now. I don’t want them to warp. I wish I had used three stringers on the fence I put up last year between us and the neighbors although it looks ok so far.

Tomorrow I will install the fence boards.

This is a sad day. One of my friends, Tom, passed away from prostate cancer yesterday. His youngest son called me with funeral details. We had seen Tom and his wife Joanne in January when we attended their 50th wedding anniversary celebration. Tom and I discovered many years ago after several glasses of wine that we were related by marriage. “Shirt tail” relatives but related never the less. Tom and I worked for the same company and both of us retired from said company. Tom moved to the desert saying “he loved the heat”.

I spent part of the day emailing friends and co-workers and making hotel reservations. We will drive down on Tuesday in time for the noon funeral Mass and spend the night before driving home on Wednesday.