Building fences . . . an explanation

Okay, I said I was building a fence and I think it needs some clarification. Yes, I'm really building a fence, and I'm doing it completely on my own without any help from anyone else (because I'm stubborn) . . . but I'm cheating so I'm not sure it counts.

First of all, why am I building a fence?

My neighbors have big Boxer dogs and I have little Toy Fox Terrier Dogs. We already have a chain link fence around our entire back yard, but since it's on the property line, the neighbors share our west side of the fence. Their dogs and my dogs don't get along. So for the last several months, my poor little doggies who used to run free in the grass of my back yard have been confined to the dusty what-used-to-be-a-garden area, shown here:

While they are small dogs and the garden area is quite large, it is dusty. This isn't a problem until I bring them into the kennels in the laundry room at night (because I can't let them be out barking at the neighbor's dogs all night). Because they are dogs, they like to shake their fur (you know what I mean, right?) and my laundry room ends up looking like this (note, I dusted this on Friday and this is what it looks like already):

I'm SICK of dusting!! When doggies ran free on the grass, we didn't have all the dust. Sure, we had grass clippings on the floor, but all I had to do was sweep them back out the door. They never got all over my walls and washer and dryer. *sigh*

Besides, do these puppies look happy to be fenced up in the dust to you?

So, I took apart my huge dog kennel and have been putting it along the sidewalk and shed on the west side of our yard. I'm not having to stretch the chain link or anything since it was already put together on the kennel.

I'm simply pounding these

into the ground to help stabilize the heavy kennel panels and binding them together:

I have also been building this

to block access to the other side from the porch (which extends beyond the sidewalk into the west side of the yard). I still have to finish the gate

and attach it to complete the blockade. I have also had to do this

along the bottom of the porch (same mesh and wood as the blockade on the porch with the addition of pretty plastic to try to make it look nicer). I still have to make a similar contraption to block these parts on the sides of the cement steps

.

So my projects are not quite done, but I'm getting there (and yes, I know the porch needs painted, that's on hubby's list of things to do . . . I already bought the paint for the outside of the house and the porch . . . I may end up doing THAT project on my own too). Oh, and on an annoying note, the kennel pieces didn't quite stretch all the way from the porch to the back fence. Luckily there is a shed to help make up the difference (yes those pieces of firewood are blocking access to under the shed).

Hey, a girl can only do so much! ;-)

And there you have it. And to think all this started because I was sick of dusting . . . after all the struggling to lift the heavy kennel pieces and maneuver them into place (not to mention the pounding, pounding, pounding with the hammer to build the porch blockade), the dusting doesn't seem so bad. =)

Build on!