I just heard the freight truck.
We have the first part of the Epic fence being delivered.
So I went with a product called Slipfence,
which I just figured would last a lot longer.
And with the price of wood, honestly, it's pretty much the same cost.
So let's go ahead and see what.
We've got going on out here. Yup. There it is.
So we've got the Slipfence being delivered right now. You'll see.
What it looks like in a second, but first we got to get it down.
Here, over here and over there. We loaded everything out.
We actually couldn't get the pallet off. So we had to hand load it. Thanks bro.
Appreciate it. So that, we've got the hardware, time to build the fence.
So I did.
Not capture the delivery of the lumber for this project.
I do have a couple clips of me cutting it up, which did take a while.
So first of all, what kind of lumber are we even working with?
The Slipfence technology,
the Slipfence system requires a five quarter inch deck board,
so one and a quarter inches, and it's six inches tall.
So you use 13 of them. You get a six foot tall fence section.
But where I got it from, J&W Lumber here in San Diego,
they only have 12 feet long sections.
So I had to get a couple hundred 12 foot long sections and cut them all in half.
So this is yellow Alaskan cedar,
12 foot long five quarter inch deck boards which,
if you know the logistics and the supply chain issues that we've
been having across the whole world, you know that probably wasn't cheap.
This is what's crazy about it. This is the part that really hurt me.
Initially for 12 foot boards, it was about $18 to $19 a board.
That's somewhat reasonable, I think, given the quality of the lumber.
It's cedar, it's going to last a very, very, very long time.
But in the time between I got that initial quote and then the time where I
finally finalized the quote, which was 30 days,
it went up $4.50 a board.
So I went from a quote of about 5,400 bucks for the lumber,
which for 245 linear feet of fence that's going to last 30 plus years,
I think that's a really good price actually. And it went up to $6,500.
So $1,100 increase in just a month,
which isn't J&W's fault it's just the fault of the lumber market.
There's nothing I could really do about that. And if I waited,
maybe it would go up even more. So the quality of the lumber really good,
but the price point did sting a little bit. So.
To cut all the lumber down to size,
I cut each 12 foot piece into a six foot piece,
one by one because there was about a half inch tolerance on the 12 foot.
And I wanted to perfectly bisect, so that when we put it out there on the fence,
it actually fit.
Well. Today begins a very long process of building the actual fence.
But to do that, we actually have to destroy the original fence.
So what we're doing is we're going to be.
Just demolishing this fence over here. This whole thing is going to go away.
We're going to rip out the chain link over there, right there and back there.
Man.
It's probably gonna take like at least a week to get all this stuff done.
Not much to show in today's update, just a bunch of demo to do.
But I will show you kind of what it looks like and what the plan is.
So we actually had.
To take out this post because we're going to replace it with one of the aluminum
posts. But going back here,
this entire side now is open.
And what's interesting is I can actually reclaim this part right here,
connecting to that chain link right there. So when you go over here,
you can see, it's going to come in slightly.
And then we've got to remove all these chain link posts over here.
To get.
All the way back to there. We're going to leave that cinder block fence.
But I'll also show you kinda the plan over here as I try not to kill myself by
tripping over all the debris in my yard.
So I need an organization consultant ASAP. Anyways,
we've got the chain link gone over here.
Posts also have to come out and the chain link is also going to get removed from
there, but that's for tomorrow. But there's gonna be two gates.
There's gonna be one five foot gate right there and another five foot gate right
there that will swing open this way.
So we'll have a nice amount of privacy because look, I mean,
right now you can actually see, if you're living in that house,
you can see what I'm doing right now. Not ideal.
So we're going to have that six foot fence probably go right about there or so.
It's going to look absolutely amazing. So.
It's been a hectic day here,
more fence progress and actually some fantastic news.
So let me take you over to the good news. So the.
Good news is that the fence has to run down this concrete,
unless I want to take the concrete out. But if I did that, well,
what would have happened?
We would have had to jut in here cause you can see the string line,
if it matched up, would be all the way out here.
Which would put this all the way over here.
Which would go through those stumps. And it wouldn't be a good time. Now,
what's the good news about that?
The good news is that my neighbor's arborists came on a magical stroke of luck
and said we'll stump grind all these Brazilian red pepper out.
All of them. Which means you're coming out, you're coming out,
you're coming out, you're sprouting, but you're still coming out, out, out.
He chopped down all the trees there. So take a look. Here's the string line.
It's in line with the concrete, and so my head's hitting it.
It's in line with the concrete, but I said, hey,
do you mind if I just move it over right to here?
That would mean I reclaim a decent amount of that fence line. Look at that.
And he said, you know what, no problem. All good.
So that is fantastic, fantastic news and a great neighbor to have.
And he actually has become a great friend of mine.
So I'm very pleased about that. But let me show you.
What we're doing over here. So we have some posts in.
This first post is 10 foot away from this post.
I'm going to have two five feet gates - five foot gate, five foot gate.
We'll have some pathway coming down here at some point.
But we've got all the posts.
In. Take a look. Shoooooo. That's how you know it's level and plumb,
when you can't see one when you do this. Ooh, yeah,
that's what I'm talking about. Looks fantastic!
Now the way that this system works, you can see over here,
they've used two of the boards to keep it level and plumb.
And the way it works, it's a very, very simple system actually.
It's called a Slipfence and I'm using the horizontal construction method.
And so you have these little channels here that you screw in to your posts.
Then you screw your deck boards into the channels.
That's all that there is to it.
So we're going to have to reset these channels here because they're not quite
aligned, but they were just used to set the posts. And then we can unscrew them,
screw them back in. We're going to run all the way down there.
We're going to run all the way across here. And of course,
we're going to run back there. So tomorrow I.
Have to dig some chain link out of the ground and hopefully I'll be able to
stain all these boards this beautiful brown color that I think is going to look
really nice as a backdrop to this Epic Homestead. So I'll see you guys tomorrow.
It is day three or four.
Of the fence project. And I'm going to just show you what's going on.
Not a lot of progress, but a little bit at least. And that's what matters.
So the first.
Thing that has happened is we've got all of the posts
installed all the way back down on the property line. So of course,
you won't be seeing any of that pretty dang soon, which will be kind of nice.
And we've also got the channels.
So the way that this system works is you've got your posts, aluminum posts,
and you have a powder coated aluminum channel right here,
which accepts the deck boards that we've been cutting, accepts 13 of them.
But of course they need to be at the right height.
So a string line was installed and we've run it all the way down this way and
just matched all these channels.
And then what we'll end up doing is we'll cut off this aluminum post at about
three inches or so. And we will apply the caps, which are right here.
So this cap will get hammered on at about this height or so. I.
Think that'll look a lot nicer than having it stick all the way up like this.
But what I really want to show you is the staining process.
So we've come up with a pretty good method over here.
Of course I don't want to stain and spray the stain all over the ground cause I
might be growing in this ground soon. Got all the gear,
we'll lay it out pretty soon.
So this is the look that I think we're going to go for in the Alaskan cedar.
I did lay it on a little thick on the backside. So this is the darker look,
which I'm actually somewhat partial to. I don't mind this look.
You can see the difference right there. It's a little bit darker,
not a whole lot. But I might go slightly darker than this,
but maybe not THIS dark.
The question is we have 550 of these boards.
And so we've come up with a pretty good system.
We're going to lay them on these tracks.
We've got a bunch of tarp and I've got like a coverall thing that I'm going to
wear, a respirator and all that.
We're gonna go down and what I've been doing is spraying down,
so using a stain sprayer,
just spraying it down and then immediately wiping it in and off with a
rag.
So the oil is just not sitting on top cause it's a semi-transparent oil stain.
So I think it's going to look really good.
It's just going to take probably a good six to eight hours to stain the entire
fence. But you know, staining it before it goes on means every part of the wood.
Is stained, which I think is going to be a good idea. Good.
Afternoon. This is probably the dumbest outfit I've ever worn in my life.
We've got the straw hat, a little floppy.
And then a coverall as if I'm somehow going to get hit by traffic
here. But this is.
The staining session. This is the solution I've come up with.
A big plastic tarp running all the way down so we can probably do about 20 to 30
boards at a time.
All right, my friends. It's day two of staining and we've been making progress.
We've like developed this system that we think works really well.
But here's one section.
It's like maybe 50 boards or something like that. And look at this though.
Ooh, that's what.
It's gonna look like.
And we're hoping to get all the boards done to go all the way over to here
today, which would actually solidify a lot of the privacy. Of course,
the whole side over there still needs work. But we've come on this staining.
Process. I'm sure someone in the Comments is going to destroy me for this,
but is what we're.
Doing. So we'll take the stain sprayer and spray the ends like this stacked up.
We'll spray all the sides stacked up and then we'll flatten them.
We'll go two by twos.
We spray down it cause the spray pattern hits two pretty well. Let that dry.
Start on another set of 10 over here and then do the same process. Flip it.
And then you put it up there. And there's Jacques hanging out,
getting stuff done. So yeah, I mean, that's.
It.
It's just kind of a long and arduous process but it's going to look really good
when it's done. Behind me you are seeing the fruits of our collective labor.
All of this is stained. It's all stained.
And I've got to say the color looks absolutely incredible! This was our setup.
You can see there's a little aftermath here. But man, this looks really good.
It's going to keep it nice and preserved for at least a little bit longer.
Shout out to Preserva Wood, who provided the stain for this project.
But take a look.
We've got a little tease of what the fence is going to end up looking like.
So we've got, most of this backyard is in. We did have to do a couple steps.
So this entire part is level. But I did want to show you.
And I don't think it looks bad at all, it's just sort of the reality.
Of dealing with a non-level surface here.
We did a three inch step-up on that corner. We came over three panels,
bumped up three, went over three panels, bumped up three, went over three.
We're gonna have to bump it one more time and finish that panel off right over
there.
The other touch that's going to happen to this entire system here is we're going
to put the cap rail on the top.
So there's going to be a black cap rail on running along all of these,
which will look really nice.
And then we're going to cut the posts to about here, about three inches above,
and put the post cap right there.
So it's a nice little tidy sort of compact look.
The cool thing is we're not getting a whole lot of warping, et cetera.
I mean look at how straight on down that is.
Some of the boards themselves were a little bit warped,
like this one for example. You can see it comes out just a little bit,
but I don't think it's enough to make a huge deal. Honestly.
I think it looks really solid.
So let's go on over to this side and take a look.
So here I am walking around on my property.
With the new fence line.
Let me give you a tour and a walk-around and we'll talk about some final
thoughts on this project,
as well as some plans I have for the garden that have to do with the fence.
So you can see we've.
Got the cap rails on, we've got the top caps. And this is the cool part.
This is my favorite part right here.
Take a look at how much space we actually gained going backwards.
So there's a little bit of warping on these boards,
but it's really not too bad and I can fix it if I just put one,
one by three down the middle. But anyways, we gained all of this back.
So I can actually walk.
Straight back here.
And access my property on this side too.
So we're coming around the shed.
All these.
Chain links are gone.
All the stumps from that tree line that used to be there, all gone.
It's so clean back here now. Look how much space there is.
It's absolutely incredible! But honestly,
my favorite part is when you go over this way, look at that.
Perfect privacy in the backyard.
Backyard is still a mess but it's perfectly private now,
which is absolutely fantastic.
And I'll walk you on over to my favorite part,
which is the gate system. So the gate really just is the same thing.
It doesn't look any different except for the fact that there's a little handle
right there. But when that's fully closed up,
it's just one seamless panel that goes all the.
Way across. Hanging out next to the rainwater tank,
which is hidden by the fence.
Let's talk about some of the costs and then finally some plans I have for the
fence, what I'm going to grow up next to it. The costs were, got to be honest,
a little rough. But some first specs - 245 feet of linear fence,
roughly somewhere around there.
So you can divide the total cost into that and you get a cost per linear
foot, which is kind of a helpful way to think about it.
First up we have the wood. I already talked about that.
The wood should've cost somewhere around $5,400.
It ended up costing $6,400 because of pandemic supply
shortage, all that kind of stuff going on. So $6,400 on that.
Then you have the slip fence system,
which cost $5,400. That was going to cost a little bit less.
I would say it was like $600 or $700 less in the month that I got the quote to
when I finalized the quote. Another pandemic price increase.
Slipfence was nice enough to include the freight for free, which was really,
really nice of them. Still, it was around $5,800.
So with the fence materials alone, you're looking at,
it was roughly around, I would say $12,000, something like that.
What was nice is that the stain was provided by Preserva Wood for free through
my friend, Sara Bendrick. So that was a big shout out.
I would say that would probably be at least a couple hundred dollars there.
That was nice. Then you have your labor. So with labor, I did some labor,
not a ton, I'll be honest on this one, but I did some.
Jacques and I both did a lot of staining.
So our labor has to be costed in there to some degree.
But really it was the contractors that cost the most.
And so contractor rates these days are going up like crazy.
So contractors that are maybe like a mid-grade contractor,
can charge premium rates because they have so many jobs
they don't really need to accept any sort of lowball or midball offers.
And so for two guys, I was paying $650 per day for them to work on it,
which totaled,
with the concrete materials that they purchased that I reimbursed them for,
it ended up being somewhere around $5,900.
Now that would be somewhere around $18,500.
But what ended up happening is my neighbor on one side split
that side of the fence, which was really great. So that was 71 linear feet.
So I divided that whole cost into the linear foot price,
which was somewhere around $75 a linear foot. And then we split that.
So I got about $2,700 back on that. Puts the total price of the fence,
I know this math is getting wild,
at somewhere around $15,500 to completely enclose the property line
in a 30 plus year lifespan fence that honestly looks amazing!
First of all, I have to figure out what to do with all this dirt,
but let's talk about some plans for the actual fence line.
What's nice is I have a six foot section from there to there, right?
And that's a north facing wall,
which would be perfect because a north facing wall gets southern exposure
all day long. It's four-ish PM right now, it's getting some sun.
What can I do there?
I could put espalier fruit trees up against that in each panel and do like an
entire row of espalier fruit trees, which is something I'm really,
really excited about. So that is something I may consider.
I may also do some trellises and maybe do blackberry bushes, raspberry bushes,
passion fruit, something like that.
I don't want to completely cover the fence up. But with that much real estate,
I think it could look really,
really gorgeous and make that property line just look amazing and be productive.
That's what I've got for you on the fence project, guys.
If you have any questions,
I'm sure I missed some details here because this one was really filmed
haphazardly. And to be honest, Epic Gardening has been really,
really hectic lately. And so stress levels at an all-time high.
Busyness levels at an all-time high.
Trying to get these videos out as quickly as I can for you guys.
But if I missed something, just let me know. I'll drop it in the Comments.
And thank you so much for watching and hanging out here on the Epic Homesteading
channel.
If you know someone that you think would like following along this whole
journey, just like DM them a video or share a video with them. I really,
really love the mission behind the Homestead here.
And I think it's a really cool thing and attainable for a lot of people,
no matter what your budget is. So until next time,
good luck in the garden and keep on growing.