Finishing touches: restoring/repairing an existing privacy fence

If you've been following along, you won't need this, but the last post on the fence was here.  I didn't get photos of Capel staining it, or putting the caps on. I'm not as good at documenting his work as my own, I'm afraid. In any case, here the caps are, having just been stained, a couple of weekends ago.

We looked into factory made caps, the kind with a little pyramid top, but we couldn't get the right size for our posts and they were unbelievably expensive. So for about $8 instead of $128, we bought a length of cedar and Capel cut and stained pieces to make the caps himself.

Then last weekend, he scraped and re-stained the old panels on the outside of the fence, because it was pretty worn. 

And, ta-da, the fence is back!

We didn't re-stain the inside. I like the lichen-y look and the inside is not nearly as worn as the outside. Here, the old pink climbing rose I planted the month we arrived. And next to it, a new salmon colored climbing rose to grow up beside it. The plan is to train them along the top of the fence, spilling out over the top to the outside ...

Someday, we'll have a little hut for the garbage, but until then, at least it's not impinging on the neighbors' front yards. We're happy. They're happy. And the new fence posts are as solid as a rock--literally. This method of setting the posts is amazingly good (see this post for details). 

We're both a little shocked and amazed we could do this ourselves. Guess we're not quite newbie DIYers any more.