Front Fence Restoration

From the very first moment that we laid eyes on this sweet old farmhouse of ours we couldn't get over how much picket fence there was. Not only was the entire backyard fenced in, but the front yard had picket fence as well (along with a gate and an arbor). In the ten years that we have lived here this front fence has taken quite a beating each winter thanks to the snowplows. Last autumn, as we were preparing the house for the winter we decided to remove the rather broken front fence. It was in need of some serious repairs and we didn't want to have anything else happen to it. Keeping the pickets became even more important after we learned that each picket, when bought new, is $3.00 a piece. As we have roughly 300 pickets for the front fence alone there was no way we could justify buying new (especially as these really were in fine condition overall)!  From each section he would need to remove the pickets, remove the nails and then sand each one before he could even think about painting them (the painting was clearly the easy part of this project). He spent many days just prying nails out of the pickets and then just as many days sanding. Thankfully due to the lovely weather that we've had these last several weekends he was able to get much of the painting done outside, and was finally able to assemble the first section of fence. It went up today and looks simply incredible! We cannot wait to see how gorgeous it looks when this project is completely finished! Now, the big question is, does he make a small gate or not... xo