Privacy Fence – Expanding the Dog Kennel

Privacy Fence – Expanding the Dog Kennel. When it came to why I didn’t do this years ago it simply came down to cost. As far as fences go privacy fence panels are not terribly expensive but when it came to the distance I wanted to go it added up fast! So, because it wasn’t NECESSARY, it got sent to my back burner for more important projects to spend my money on.

Fast forward several years and part of my Mom’s privacy fence went down one serious storm and then it just kept going down. She has a lot of plans for her own place so the wind actually did her a favor and she didn’t have any use for the panels…

So, guess who got all of the fence we needed for free!?

With the cost now of only 4×4 posts and screws I was ecstatic!!

You can see I put the privacy fence along the road and the driveway while the other side of the fence that’s in the backyard is chain link. The chain link was also free (so many years ago…) but I really like any pets we have being able to see into the yard and us to be able to see them!

This project is literally a WIN – WIN – WIN – WIN. A bigger dog run means a happier dog, it also means less yard to mow, it ALSO means a great dirt block of the literal clouds of dust that come off that road all summer long and, of course, it also provides more privacy to our backyard too.

I never would have built a home this close to the road.

I love this home.

Being on the road is one of the things I hate about this home.

To be fair when the home was built there was no traffic.

With the privacy fence panels here and ready to go I headed out one evening and walked it all off and was astounded: it was more than we needed!

We wouldn’t have to buy any more panels to go all the way!

With that knowledge we picked up as many 8 foot, treated, 4×4 posts as we needed.

I am aware I insist on building privacy fence different than most other folks. I have no regrets and stand by my decision. The straight lined winds that took my mom’s fence down barely touched mine because of how I built it.

I put the panels BETWEEN the posts.

It maximizes the distance we can cover (16 panels of fence adds up to nearly 5 feet added in length doing it like this) and it also distributes the weight between the posts and not on one side. Any posts will eventually give out with the weight of all those panels pulling at it from one side… we have ALL seen privacy fences laying down at one point or another…

When our fence got hit by that same storm all that happened was ONE of our panels went down. All of the posts were just fine and I simply had to put the downed panel back up with a couple of screws.

I was quite proud of our fence!

With a tape measure, a post hole digger, a drill, torque screws and one afternoon, we got our “new” privacy fence up!

We measured out to where the next post needed to go, dug the hole extra big, put in the post, put the panel between the posts by screwing sideways into its supports and then we moved on to the next.

(I’m glad that the fence panels were already older so they don’t look “new” beside the old fence… Obviously we noticed the two fences are not exactly alike but I don’t think anyone will ever notice.)

Having the length of our yard covered in privacy fence and now blocked from even more dust is such a great thing and not to mention the extra privacy!

Of course our doggo Annie totally loves it too. She has nearly 15,000 square feet of her own personal yard now!

We got lucky and only had to deal with one big root in over a dozen holes – it forced us to shift our fence a little bit so that place isn’t perfect, however, it was bound to happen. We have SO MANY trees.

We also got lucky that we had quite a bit of rain before this so it was much easier digging.

No we did not concrete in the posts.

I’ve finally decided that that is personal decision depending on your situation.

Concrete WILL rot out posts (green treated or regular) faster than most soil but if you don’t have decent enough soil to hold the posts in place it may not be an option.

For us, as long as we packed the soil well, we didn’t have to use concrete.

Amazingly we had only two extra panels leftover, it worked out about perfect!

We’re VERY happy with our new expanded fence!