Before and after April 30 front picket fence repair

The top photo shows where our picket fence had fallen down cause all of the fence posts had rotted off. I had slavaged the picket fence panels and put them back up the best I could today.

 A lot of the trees in the front yard are dying, mostly white pine trees. I'm attempting to get them cleaned up and removed, the one in the photo below has been cut up and needs to be hauled away, you can see one standing dead white pine and 2 dead white pines are leaning on other trees so they'll be hard to get down.

 This tree here is a baby Santa Rosa Plum tree, no plums on it yet. I am allowing the aspen trees to grow up to fill in where the white pine trees have been dying, you can see baby aspens above and blow.

Here are some photos of the picket fencing and arbor where it had not rotted and fallen down.

You can't see them now but there are flower gardens, currant bushes and vines in this area, not quite greened up yet this year.

The sections north of here, next photos a bear had broken the picket fence section and I had to replace that, I'll add a before and some after shots where I repaired the broken picket fence here today.

I did have to remove some lilac bushes to get the broken fence down, glad I had marked the "sensation" lilac with the white plastic guard so I knew not to prune that one out, I only have a couple of those and don't want to lose them. Will attempt to salvage some of the broken pieces of the picket fence for some other use..

So this was what I accomplished today, I'm going to have to relax now as I'm sore and bushed.

trying again to put a link to my old blog

https://restfultrailsfoodforestgardens.blogspot.com

salvage landing

So much work yet to do to finish this deck and make it safe, reinforcing under each section, more facia, lattice etc..so when I realized I had these 3 gates that I had salvaged from a previous fence that I could use as a temporary landing spot at the end of the steps I jumped at the chance.

The gates were used previously as 2 driveway gates and a walk gate on an old fence line that no longer exists..and these were stored in a pile.

When I was going through the pile for picket fence panels I found these and with some reworking was able to make boardwalk type landing at the bottom of the deck steps to make a safe footing until I'm able to lift again after the surgery and will have time and energy to put in cement.

There have been people telling me that these aren't safe..well..they are well reinforced underneath with several 2x4's each and are made 5/4 deck lumber that is treated for ground contact..so they are safe for now. The rest of the deck needs railings finished and reinforcing put underneath as well as facia and lattice, and I'll get that done next week or the following week..but this is where my greenhouse used to be and the soil wasn't ready for me to dig out for a sidewalk yet. One good thing, the black plastic with the decking on it will kill off all of the weeds and grass in this area and then when I'm properly healed enough to work on sidewalks, I'll have an easier time digging this out and putting in the cement...in the meantime it is safe and although the shadows make it look crooked, it is level.

painting railings, finishing up around east deck.

 Well we started out with a large hole in our east deck where we had a small greenhouse that we moved to the south side of the house by the handicapped ramp. We decided that we wanted to have steps down this side of the east deck to access our back yard easier on the east side where Joel's house is and where we have the pond and the raised bed gardens.

 We decided to build the steps in the area where the old greenhouse had been, we had to dig up dozens of bricks that had been there to form paths inside the greenhouse. There is also a lot of weeds and plants in this area that have to be cleaned out. There was a lot of unfinished deck in this area and there were NO railings at all on the north part of the east side of the deck.

We bought the materials to start putting up railing on the steps and on the edges of the east side where the greenhouse had been, we decided not to expand the deck at this time, just hurry and patch it up best we could because I'm having brain surgery in May and we wanted to get as much done as we could before the surgery.

 Here you can see some of the raised bed gardens just beyond the new steps that we put down, we still have alot of work to do at the bottom of the steps where the greenhouse was and bricks were dug up.

Here we put some raililng and some patches to holes in the deck to make it safe on the side where the greenhouse had been. I began to paint the railings this week. Ran out of spindles but will pick them up Monday when I go to the Dr for the one year recheck on my shoulder surgery. The closest store that carries the spindles is Menards in Traverse city.

Here we have repaired most of the railings and I have gotten the insides of them mostly painted, a lot of work. The house you see is our son Joel's house next door.

Utility area had no railing around the flower bed, and needed access to the utility box. I plan to build a gate here. 

Ran out of spindles doing this part but will finish this and the gate on the other end when I buy more spindles next week.

Here we h ad to bump out the railing away from the pear tree, as last year the pear tree knocked down the railings and laid its heavily laden branches right down on the deck all fall. We did cut off some branches and moved the railing back another two feet away from the pear tree to give it some more room, hopefully it will be enough. There is a small gate in this end of the bumped back railing to give us access behind the railing to the pear tree.

Here is a photo with ONE coat of paint on all of the railings and spindles (we still need to finish the spindles and make the gate and finish unfinished railings next week after a trip to Menards. Also there needs to be some touch up paint done on the outside of the railings where I need a ladder to reach to top of the back sides..This was 10 hours of painting to get this much done. Still have to repaint the railings on the front and back deck and the handicapped ramp. Back is very sore.

salvaging posts and ran out of spindles....

 The Utility area needed railings so no one fell into the hole, but also needs access to the utility boxes.
This end will eventually have a gate to provide that access. As you can see I ran out of spindles while putting in this railing, and after these photos were taken I robbed one of the end spindles for measuring when I put railing at the woodshed end of the deck.

 This is where I ran out of spindles. And I removed one to use to measure when I put the railings on the NE end of the deck.

The cross rails on all of the new railings are salvaged 2 x 4's that I had from previous fences that were taken apart, some were badly weathered and checked, but they saved us a lot of money reusing them and a lot of waste. I try not to let anything go to waste around here.

 Boy am I going to have a huge paint job when this is done, I not only have all this on the east side deck but the front porch and handicap ramp is all spindle rails and the back porch is also spindle rails. Some day I even hope to put spindle rails down the North deck by our apple tree deck.

The posts that you see at the left hand side of these two photos were some that I salvaged from a neighbor, they had been buried in the ground and the bottoms had rotted off, and they had no tops or finials. By reusing these slavaged posts it saves us about $32. The two boards that you see on the deck that are filling in a space are salvaged from our sons replaced front step, may add one more. And the cross pieces are salvaged 2x4's from an old fence.

The white spindles you see on the far left are 6 that I had left from some old railing that I salvaged. I spaced them a bit farther apart as these railings have a different shape than the new railings I have been buying, and the old railing style is no longer available, Our old post style is no longer available either. The arbor you see built in the center photos was also built with some salvaged material to hold woodbine vines.We are really enjoying the new steps down to the raised beds....I even built another raised bed today but it isn't in the photographs.

Going to have to repair/replace our picket fencing west property line.

West of here along our property line we had a picket fence from the road to to woods along the property line. We put the fence panels up with posts made of landscape timbers and that was a long time ago. Some of them rotted at the ground level and broke off and the fence fell down in many spots.

Well I removed a lot of it and couldn't afford to buy the posts at the time to repair it, and with all of the surgeries over the past years, especially the shoulder surgery limited the amount of work I've been able to do as well.

Our neighbors only visit from time to time but their dog chases my cat when it is out and she has to climb a tree for protection. SO. I've decided to attempt to repair/ replace the picket fence that I took down this year as soon as possible.

I walked the fenceline and found that I am going to need about 20 posts to reattach the panels that I took down, some posts are still up and solid and some fence panels are still up. I won't be buying new fence panels at this time, but I'll be replacing at least one broken panel and possibly one that is in rough shape. I have 2 arbors with gates still standing along this property fenceline. I have also planted a LOT of trees, shrubs and flowers along the fenceline. There are white pine, red pine, hemlock, lots of berry shrubs and flowering shrubs like lilacs, a few deciduous trees and some mints, jerusalem artichokes, daylilies and other flowers, a crab apple and some other shrubs and plants.

When I begin to work on the repair/replace I'll update with photos.

Building steps off deck to the east..

Built the steps going down from the east deck to the east side yard to where I have raised beds and a pond area. Just finished the railings on the steps yesterday, did the steps a few days before.

This is looking up at the deck from the bottom of the steps. There is a lot of work yet to do here, especially painting all the railings a fresh coat of white paint. I still have to put railings to the right of these steps and do some major repair to the deck in this area. Need also to place lattice under the deck, and put more railings in other areas. Lots of paint work to do all over but it will be cold and rainy for a while yet.

Still have to put a board between the top step and deck where we have a gap also. The house in the photo is Joel's house next door.

The white screen that you can see to the left in the yard is where we have a pond garden and swing. There is a whole lot of work yet to be done but I'm so glad we have progress being made, less than a month to get stuff done before craniotomy surgery so I'm cramming it in.

Work done this week on east deck..

Above as I showed in previous post we had to remove the railing by the pear tree because the pear tree was pushing it over, we reassembled it and moved it out 2 feet, giving it 2 new end posts and some used railing pieces for each end, adding a gate to the right side.

We'll need to add top rail to end pieces and add a lot of white paint, all the rails and trim need a fresh coat of paint, but right now too much to do and too cold to paint (40 degrees).
On the photo above the right end of the bumped out railing is a gate so we can access both sides.

Today Ron and I built a 6 step stairway off of the east side of our deck toward the east yard and raised beds. There is a gap that needs to be filled between the top step and the deck, which we'll do when we can, right now we are freezing as we did this in 40 degree weather today.

This is another area of the garden deck that needs work before I have surgery. We are going to use 5 turned posts and turned spindles and build a railing around this utility garden area and also 4 posts and turned spindles to put railings on the new steps going east as shown above. We have the materials here to get this done and hope to do it before my surgery if the weather will cooperate. This bed has perennials that grow up in it and a ground cover of vinca. We left it open to flowers so we could access the gas and utilities in this area. We will put a gate on this end so that we can get in there and access utilities.

Before photo of plum tree area...

Same shot, today. I pruned out a lot of the plum tree to remove damaged areas and areas overhanging the roof and the entry way (to the right of photo). The tree was also mulched with plastic and wood chips, which I dug out and removed all the plastic and turned under the wood chips. I planted several pink and white lilies, and seeds of alyssum, pinks, hollyhocks, pink, white and red poppies, delpheniums, datura, columbines, sunflowers, 3 kinds of cosmos (pink, shell pink and whites and yellows), there are a few perennials behind the tree that will be coming up and a couple in this bed that were there from before, you can see them in the above photo.

I also pruned 3 lower branches off of our large pear tree that overhangs our east deck today (love my oregon battery operated chain saw) that Joel got for my birthday for me several years ago.

Today I also got all the rest of the railing down to redo around the pear tree on east deck, need to pick up some turned posts at Menards along with step material to build a 6 step 4' wide stairway off the east deck to the east lawn. Want to get all of this done before my surgery in May.

Spring hustle before surgery

Well I have found out that I have to have brain surgery in May. After the surgery I'll be on some pretty heavy restrictions, so I have to keep busy between now and then to get as much done as possible. Last year I removed most of the lattice around this area, as it was falling down cause the 25 year old fence posts were rotting off. The area at the right hand side became very congested with weed trees among the hazel nuts and plum trees, so yesterday I spent 2 hours cutting out weed trees and making a path for the lawnmower to get along the south (left) side of the hazel nuts and plum trees, last year I wasn't able to reach most of the plums to harvest them because of so many weed tree babies.

Now I have a path done and hopefully will replace the fencing, because rabbits got into this area and over the wire around the fences and destroyed a half dozen baby apple trees and some other trees in this area. I'm considering refencing it and planting 2 peach trees in this area where the other trees were that were ruined. (more photos later). See previous post on rabbits, both trees in that post photo were in this area.

This area around this plum tree out in front by the front steps had plastic under mulch to prevent weed, but the plastic was killing the plum tree because the rain wasn't getting to the roots. So over the past two weeks I've been removing the plastic and mulch and then re leveled the area and planted it with lily bulbs and flower seeds.

I redid this area as well this week, I moved the birdbath to an area farther east and moved out the chair and bench that were falling apart (someday hope to buy new wood for these) cleaned up a bunch of weeds etc and I planted some new bulbs and seeds in this area as well.So I've gotten this area done for now (oh I also moved my bird feeder post back over here as well).
I'm starting to work on the raised beds this week also, I did pull out some weeds and turned up some soil. I need to get some "as soon as the soil can be worked" seeds in pretty soon, I did plant some potatoes that were sprouting in a tote as well. As I posted in a previous post we also began to move railings on the east deck by that pear tree, which we'll try to finish up this next week (photos will follow). And Joel put a new drive train in our Subaru which we helped with.

I also did get the new mailbox up,so progress is being made, but so much yet to do.

Pears taking over my deck !!

2018 the pear tree was so heavy that the branches laid right down on the deck by the time they were big enough to harvest and they were knocking over the deck railing. We decided in 2019 to remove 2 sections of deck railing and move them out a couple of feet and re install them. We are in the process of purchasing more railing material and posts this next week and will be rebuilding the railings in a more appropriate style to help keep the pear branches from laying down on the deck and not damaging the pear.

It looks so innocent in bloom (2018) not like it was about to completely take over the deck, but as  you can see above, all the branches got so  heavy that they went horizontal.

This is this spring, the innocent branches are vertical again, but how long will that last ? Well we removed two sections of the railing and the damage to the branches isn't too bad.

We have 2 smaller rail sections on an old back porch where they are no longer needed, so we'll attach those at a 90 degree angle at each post, and then purchase 2 more posts to attach the two railings we removed and box in the pear tree with railings. Don't want anyone falling off as it is a 4'  drop.
Hopefully the new railing placement will keep the heavy branches off the deck floor this year??
Will post more photos when we get the new rails up and done.