As I've been doing, the task of covering the grounds with gravel and erecting a fence all the way around the grounds has been and will continue for a good while. I've been focusing on the midway as far as the graveling is concerned since this area is long and covered in mushy ground. Because of that, the gravel doesn't go as far as it would on more solid ground since I have to mush the gravel into the mud then come back over that area with more gravel to ensure a good covering of ground that will take the weight of the truck. On the last gravel run the old guy the cement place had working the front end loader that day mistakenly loaded me up with pea gravel instead of the 1" gravel I typically get. While I could've been upset about it, there was really no remedy to this since no one is going to shovel all this gravel out of the bed of my truck so I just said screw it and rolled with it. After thinking about it, it might've been a blessing in disguise as it allowed me to fill in the intermediate area between the walkway and the rock garden with more pea gravel. I was planning on getting bags of pea gravel from Lowe's to further cover this area but at $4 a bag, I would've spent way more than the $10 for the bed load of pea gravel I ended up with. I was able to fully cover the intermediate area with a thick bed of pea gravel and have plenty left over to cover more area of the midway with pea gravel. I'll end up covering this stuff with more of the larger stuff in the future as we drive over it and smash it into the mud. Since the pea gravel that got spread would be covered later on by the larger gravel, I figured I could just focus on filling in the mushier areas in the yard as well as the farther out areas that will get a second covering of rock. The pea gravel in many spots is the first layer in what would be several layers of rock so rather than waste good rock on a base layer, its pea gravel to the rescue! Even though the plan was to put the pea gravel in spots that will be driven over to get a base layer started, I did decide to lay the thickest layer off center towards the garden fence line since this area of the midway will most likely not see any vehicular traffic. This area will almost be more of a walkway for foot traffic after getting in and out of a car that is sitting on the center of the midway. Even if a car is parked more to the garden side of the midway, it'll only be one side of the vehicle putting weight on the pea gravel. The next thing I turned my attention to was the sinking of fence posts along the west side fence line running parallel to the driveway. After getting more posts to finish the run terminating at the main driveway, I had to rearrange a couple of the vehicles parked in the general park area since they were parked with their noses pointed out to the driveway. Since the fence posts would be going in the ground right through where the cars were parked, they had to be turned 90 degrees, putting them parallel to the driveway. Also they had to be reoriented this way because when I put the fence panels up, even if the cars weren't in the way, they would be blocked in. Besides after the fence is up, vehicles and other equipment would be brought in and oriented this way anyway. With the post hole auger I was able to get all the holes drilled super fast. As with other fence posts, to make things go fast I just laid the post in the hole then poured the dry concrete into the hole along with water until the hole was completely filled up with soaked concrete. With all the posts in the ground, I was ready to start installing panels. The only reason that I decided to go to panels instead of piecing together the fencing like we had been is because the components have went up in price drastically in some areas. While the pickets still held strong around $2 average per picket (which is still high compared to what they should cost in a complete panel), the pressure treated 2x4's went up twofold. Normally they were $5 a board for 2x4x8 boards, now, they're $10 a board. The completed panels are around $43 a panel. When you factor in the cost of the three 2x4's and the approximately 20 pickets, even without the nails and time a completed panel will end up costing 2x as much as a commercially made panel. So yep, we'll be getting completed panels as long as we can still find them.
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