A new fence - before and after

Last year we did a lot of work to the inside of our little council flat, and having done that, we're finally starting to do a bit more in the garden. First up a brand new fence/screen for our little area of decking.

This is what it looked like originally:

The Old Fence. Scruffy.

I'd cobbled it together from old scraps of wood and a scaffolding pole. It had it's charm, but the honeysuckle was getting way too big for it, and it didn't really give us any privacy from the block of flats behind us.

So we bought three sturdy 2x3 inch wood poles, and sunk them into the ground, using postcrete at the bottom to give them more stability. I'd never used postcrete before, but it seemed pretty simple - just pour it in the hole the pole sits in and add water. The first pole is a little wobbly - but the other two are steady as a rock. I only put them down about a foot, as I didn't want to disturb the border behind them too much.

Old fence still there, posts concreted in position.

Next I cut to length lots of very rough 2x1 inch strips, and screwed them into the posts on either side alternately. I left them slightly more than 2 inches apart so you can see a bit through the screen. This is the first side going up:

Rear side on - with the old fence still in place.

And then the rear side, and a beam at the top:

The (nearly) finished fence. The old honeysuckle is still there - just draped on the border in front.

The real labour of love was cutting off the honeysuckle from the old screen. I was all for hacking it to the ground, but the other gardener has a lot more patience than me, so it survived.

Now all we have to do is paint the whole thing with protective wood stain to protect the wood, and then add wires across from the top to the side of the house to make a sort of pergola. It was pretty easy to put up - but took me three weekends in total.

From the other side it looks enormous. Means we're totally hidden though now - which is exactly what we wanted.