Saying Goodbye to the Sand Pit with the Help of YouTube

After we finished building our home on St. George Island and resumed summer RV travel in 2022, our big goal for the winter of 2022-2023 was to finish work on the exterior of our property. Mainly we needed to address the area that I had not-so-lovingly dubbed “The Sand Pit.” When we built our home, we chose to place it on the highest elevation area of the lot, which also happened to be mostly sand. One happy consequence of the siting decision was that we only needed to remove one tree to accommodate the house, and we were able to preserve a lush green swath of native plants featuring palmettos, slash pines, cabbage palms, oak, red cedar, ilex, wax myrtle, and more. At the end of construction, our house and driveway occupied about half the lot, the preserved vegetation occupied about one quarter, and the rest was a raw, unfinished area of sand occupied by a few exceptionally hardy weeds. It had no obvious purpose and no real function other than serving as a dusty shortcut to our mailbox. The area looked so abandoned that people would occasionally use it as a turnaround area off the adjacent road, to Ken’s infinite annoyance. To make matters even worse, it wasn’t tucked away out of sight, but ran alongside our driveway. The Sand Pit needed help.

 

 

Our first order of business when we returned from our 2022 summer travels was to develop a plan. We remain undecided on whether we want to put in a pool, so we knew our plan needed to preserve that option for the future. After lots of pacing around, measuring, and tinkering with ideas, Ken came up with a plan that enthused us both. We decided we should install a privacy fence to establish the space and get some relief from dust blown in from the adjacent dirt road, add a deck at ground level to use as a winter sun patio, add a few cabbage palms to create vertical interest and some shade, and leave enough room inside the fence to accommodate a possible future pool.

Armed with sketches and measurements, we started contacting contractors to get estimates. From this point forward, this project was a perpetual reminder that we live in a sparsely populated area with few choices in vendors. I knew of three potential suppliers for the palm trees: the guy who installed one tree on our side yard about a year earlier (Tom), the guy who installed a bunch of palms on our next door neighbor’s property last summer (Curtis), and the fabulous Tallahassee Nurseries. After a few short phone calls I learned that Tom had retired, Tallahassee Nurseries had no interest in taking on such a small job (they referred me to Curtis), and Curtis is a very amiable person in addition to being our only option. Curtis only makes the 1-hour trip out to our island when he has several orders, usually about once per month. Predictably, our first window opened the same day we were leaving on our short trip to St. Augustine in January. That pushed us out to the next trip, but at least by the end of February we could be excited about having three new palm trees to nurture.

 

 

In retrospect, the palm trees were the easiest part of the project. At the same time we were arranging for tree delivery and installation, we were interviewing a series of potential fence and deck contractors. A fence guy who came highly recommended by some friends on the island turned out to be very pleasant in person, but had recently suffered some serious health issues and split from his business partner. Since he never provided us with an estimate after several follow-ups, I can only assume he wasn’t able to handle the job. A few other leads from neighbors yielded no results. Finally we turned to our home builder, with some fear that he would offer to have his crew “squeeze us in” at some point, creating more potential delays. Happily, he gave us a recommendation for a handyman who turned out to be an engaging guy, skilled in several areas (including being a licensed electrician in case we wanted to add outdoor lights), and offering several good design ideas. His estimate was fair and we were happy to move forward with him once he finished up a few other jobs ahead of us. In consultation with our contractor, we agreed that we would go ahead and have the trees installed, and that the fence would be the first part of the fence-and-deck project. I confirmed with our local building department that no permit is required for a fence (??) and stayed in touch with the contractor. Somehow, the timeline of “I can start in a few weeks” never seemed to change. We got our hopes up when he asked us to select some materials, but the start date never actually changed to “next week” or “tomorrow.” We knew he worked part time as a bartender, and when spring break rolled around I knew we would be losing him to his other, better-paying job.

Eventually, after months of failing to make concrete progress, I cried out in exasperation, “This is ridiculous! We’ve done plenty of construction work with power tools before. We spent a month working with Habitat for Humanity.  We helped with the framing work on our own house. Surely we can build a wood fence ourselves!” Always skeptical of my hare-brained ideas, Ken simply replied, “Don’t call me Shirley.”

Eventually, I managed to convince Ken that we could tackle the job of building a wood fence. This, of course, is where YouTube comes in. From various RV repairs we’ve completed, we know that there is a YouTube video covering virtually any project, no matter how obscure. Building a wood privacy fence is so common that there are literally thousands of videos describing the steps. My best find was an entire YouTube channel created by a professional fence installer featuring voice-over commentary of DIY YouTube fence videos explaining what the amateurs did right and what they did wrong. It was solid gold. Thank you, Joe Everest the Fence Expert, for allowing us to learn from the mistakes of others. (Also, for entertaining me with a true layperson explanation of copyright’s fair use doctrine.) After about one day of scrolling through videos, I was completely confident that (a) we could do this and (b) we could do it better than half the clowns on YouTube.

I won’t bore you with all the different construction options we considered, but in the end we decided on a basic approach: 4×4 posts, 2×8 horizontal stringers, and individual wood pickets instead of pre-fab panels. With our research and measurements complete, it was time to order supplies. This turned out to be a three-step process. Our friends at Home Depot don’t deliver lumber to our area, so we ordered everything but the pickets from our local hardware store — the same place that delivered all the wood to build our house. We didn’t like their selection of pickets, however, so we picked those up ourselves at Home Depot in Tallahassee.

 

 

Fun fact: our truck bed holds exactly 192 pickets (8 across and 24 high), and the specs for the pickets say they weigh 7.5 pounds each. A full bed is 1,440 pounds, conveniently just under the truck’s weight rating of 1,500 pounds. For almost 200 feet of fence, we made two trips. It’s probably the closest we have come to reaching our truck’s rated limits, far more than towing our 7,500 pound trailer! The best part about this project is that it gave us an excuse to upgrade our tool kit. With the money we saved on labor, we more than covered the cost of a new cordless circular saw, impact driver, and drill, plus several batteries. Home Depot was happy to send those to us via FedEx along with a dozen pounds of exterior wood screws of various sizes.

Taking glamour shots of power tools is totally normal, right?

When it came to actually building the fence, our top concern was accuracy. We wanted everything to be as square as possible — square to the house and to itself. We also wanted the top lines to be really straight and not undulating. Our best tool for this purpose was string: string lines showing the fence perimeter to set the posts, and string lines between the corner posts to maintain consistent height of the posts. Our second-best tool was math. When setting our perimeter lines, we did lots of a²+b²=c² calculations to make sure our corners were as close to square as possible. For those of you wondering when you will ever need to use geometry after high school, I am here to tell you that Pythagoras is your friend in fence-building situations. Our last critical tool was our type-A, perfectionist personalities. Every structural board in this fence was measured, custom cut when needed, and pre-drilled, and every picket was tested for fit to its neighbor, height, and levelness.

And now please enjoy a million photos of our process:

 

The most challenging part was getting the fence to connect to the area at the bottom of our stairs without actually being physically attached. We didn’t want to add any weight or new structural pressure on the house itself, but some clever cantilevering helped us complete the perimeter of the fence. Building and hanging the gate was also fairly challenging, with more engineering required than any other part of the fence. A simple but very positive upgrade was using leftover lumber to create a new post for our bird-feeder. Moving it off our stairs and into the newly enclosed yard area means we can see the birds much better from our windows, and we are less likely to disturb them when we come out the front door.

Overall, we’re happy with how it came out. And every time we see that there are some flaws such as warping or shrinkage, I sternly remind Ken that “Wood is a natural product.” Some final pictures:

 

 

Careful readers will note that our original plan called for a privacy fence, palm trees, and a deck. Well, by the time we finished the fence we decided it was too hot to start work on the deck. That part of the project is now officially postponed to the fall, when we will also install more landscaping around the fence.

For now, it’s time to get ready for summer travel!