Fence Facelift

Our yard is fully fenced in & it's awesome for Sadie, but we own very little of it, so can't control the state of the fence, most of them are lovely. One of them if I ran at it, I could have run through it completely, so we grabbed a roll of chainlink fence right after we bought the house & stuck it to the poles on our side to make sure we didn't have a runaway pup on our hands. However, the part that we do own, was gray & kind of unattractive. So I got it in my head that staining it would be much more appealing.

Little did I know, that sanding would be significantly more intense than anticipated. We grabbed a pack of sandpaper sheets when we were going to start the project because we weren't able to hose off enough to make it look like good wood again. So we started sanding...with small sheets...by hand. Bad decision, it took forever, my hands hurts, my arms hurt & my fingernails were getting sanded down as well. 

Left - After Sanding | Right - Sanded Needed

Well, 1 week of evening work we had the biggest section of fence done & it looked stellar. So we took a 2 week break. 

Then it was time to do the smallest section. I decided to venture out on this section on my own. I am a perfectionist when it comes to painting, I apologize, but this is a trait that comes from my father, so I can't help it! But during the 1st section, I couldn't handle watching Greg stain, it was dripping, he held the brush all wrong & I was stressed! So I let him help sand & then asked him to let me stain by myself. And it was done!

This weekend I finally was able to crank out the last part, got up early, sanded...added band-aids to my fingers...everyone of them actually because hotspots popped up all over. Hosed it down, let it dry & then finally wrapped up the day staining. It looks so much more appealing, love looking at it from the swing!

Steps:

1. Hose it down in JET setting

2. Sand until you can see the wood grain again

3. Hose again to get the dust off

4. Let is dry

5. Stain (with proper technique & no dripping stain!)

6. Relax in the swing with wine or coffee