This past week I took some much needed time off to take care of some things around the house. Everything from touching up the trim around the house to mowing the lawn. One of the bigger projects I tackled was replacing/fixing the fence in front of our home. The fence was originally 6 feet tall and constructed to keep our neighbors "foliage" on their side of the common area. Over the years, their plants and bushes died off. This left the fence as more of a visual obstruction than a partition. When I would back out of the driveway, I was unable to see any oncoming traffic until I was partially in the road.
I thought nothing of the matter as I was always careful backing out from my driveway. The defining moment was when my daughter was born. Once she was old enough to play outside, the fence became a visual hindrance. Oncoming traffic was unable to see anyone in our driveway and anyone in our driveway could not see any oncoming cars.
With tools in hand, I woke up bright and early to tackle the project on my day off. We opted to try to recycle some of the boards in an effort to save money on materials. This turned the job into more of a "surgical extraction" than a demo of the fence boards. After hours of painstakingly removing the fence boards ensuring that I kept track of their order, I was ready to cut the fence posts down to size. I measured my desired post height and trimmed. I moved on to trim the fence boards to accommodate the reduced height. I was about halfway through the fence when my wife came home from work for her lunch break. She made note that the fence was still a little "too high" and wanted it a bit lower. I politely tipped my hat and once again "surgically removed" the planks as best I could to ensure I was able to reuse them later. By the end of the day I had reduced the fence to about 3 feet high, trimmed all the planks and reapplied them to the fencing using all of the original materials (planks, nails, etc.)
The Project Manager a.k.a my wonderful wife, came home and had a few more "Change Requests" for the project. The spacing of the planks were too far apart and the stain I had used wasn't quite the right color. After a very "constructive" discussion, my wife and I both agreed that we would go to Home Depot and buy new wood while also selecting the stain she wanted. The next day went by much faster. I had the right materials (New wood, the right color stain, screws instead of nails, etc.) and was able to finish the project by lunch.
What did I learn from this experience? I developed an appreciation on how customers process their clients Change Orders and Change Requests. I can see how one little change can cost time and money. It's important to plan accordingly no matter how big or small the Job will be. I had allotted about 6 hours to my fence project when in actuality it spanned the course of two days. I can only imagine scaling that to a million dollar job.
The most important thing learned over the course of this project.... Go to Home Depot with your wife BEFORE you start the project!
Enjoy your week everyone!
