Who knew that building a privacy fence could be a family project with young children? I didn't expect it to turn out as well as it did. And it only took us 2 days (I already set the posts) and the fence looks great.

My wife and I decided to build a privacy fence. After going and pricing and looking at everything we decided to build it piece-by-piece. This takes longer, but looks better, holds up better, and costs less than the 8 ft preassembled sections. Putting it together ourselves holds up better because we used screws to fasten it. The preassembled sections are all nailed together. The preassembled sections cost about $50 per section plus the posts to attach them to. To build it ourselves it cost about $35 per section. So, we decided to start building last weekend.

On Thursday my wife found out she had to go to Kansas City. So I was going to be home with the kids trying to build the fence. So, my son (who is 5), my daughter (who is 3), and I were going to build the fence. I was thinking sarcastically,"this is going to be good." Surprisingly it actually worked out very well. My daughter wore my tool belt (wrapped around her waist twice and was still big) and handed me screws, my son handed me fence pickets, and I took care of the rest. We had a good flowing system going and made really good time. We finished our longest section of about 50 ft. in 3 hours. All that work was almost more than the kids could take. But we managed to get it done. By the way the kids slept great after working as hard as the did.