I’ve always been a big fan of privacy fences for the backyard – I think they just give you a feeling of being in your own private sanctuary. So, you can imagine that I was completely aghast when we realized that not only was the fence in our backyard falling apart, but the 6 foot “privacy” fence was completely inadequate for giving us any privacy. Who would have thunk it??
The problem was that our house is built on the top of a tiny little hill (and I mean tiny – we’re in the middle of a city for goodness sakes) – that means that our backyard slopes down towards the alley and we could see straight into our neighbor’s backyard from our backyard . . . and our bedroom and everywhere else – and the neighbors could look right into our backyard . . . and our bedroom . . . and everywhere else. Not exactly the little private sanctuary that we were hoping for!! We needed a taller fence, and fast.
Our existing fence posts were metal and set in a concrete retaining wall, so we realized that it would be a huge and costly endeavor to rip those puppies out. Instead of tearing up our backyard, we chose to replace just the wood slats of the fence with 8 foot wood slats and keep the existing metal fence posts – the issue with the short metal fence posts was easily remedied by adding a little metal fence toppers to the top of the existing fence posts. The fence guys just removed the metal caps from the top of the 6 foot fence posts, added a two-foot metal sleeve to the fence posts and then capped the now-8-foot-fence-posts off with the old metal caps – easy!!
Here’s a pic of what the finished product looks like from the alley:
I love that we were able to reuse the existing metal posts, saving us both money and a big hassle. The extra two feet of fencing makes a HUGE difference in the privacy that we have in our backyard, which is really great. As you can see from this pic, nothing less than an 8 foot fence (the tallest allowed in our city) would have given us any privacy from our neighbors. Not that they aren’t lovely, but seriously.
What steps have you taken in your home to gain a little privacy from the neighbors?
How clever to be able to add extensions to the metal supports! (Sorta like hair extensions)
When we added on to our house, we made sure our new window placement was staggered with the windows on our (very) close neighbor’s window arrangement.
I like how the new site is developing. Keep the creativity coming!
Cyndi,
I love the hair extension analogy – that just made me laugh. :) Great thinking on staggering any new windows – such an easy way to maintain some privacy!!
~ Liz