Our side fence on the south side of our yard was redone about 18 months ago. It started out as a project that my neighbor (a residential and commercial builder) and I were going to tackle as a group/team build. I did the initial work power washing the old fence twice, tearing the old fence down, saving the lumber that was in good shape, and running the string lines for the new fence. My neighbor was on the hook for setting the new posts and reinstalling the good wood on the “new” fence and supplying any new material.
That agreement lasted until about a week before the new fence was about to go in. At that point, the neighbor decided to use the project as a “proof of concept” for a fence installation technique that he had seen recently. That also changed the design and he wanted to use ALL new material. I was out on the new and additional cost but agreed to pay for the materials and supply the labor for sealing the fence and also volunteered for adding a torii-like fence gate topper for the 4′ gate connecting our yards to make the total fence cost somewhat amicable.
The fence was sealed (Thompson’s Water Seal is my favorite!) the day after it was installed and 2 days before I had knee reconstruction. There was a somewhat pointed style and wood type discussion for the gate that put me off a little and I moved the project to the BACK of my to-do list priority. Fast-Forward to 18 months later and 6 weeks into the Covid-19 Crisis and my project list was getting tiny, so I spent a warm spring Sunday getting the gate topper cut and installed.
I used a nice hunk of tight-grained tight-knot red cedar and inset the posts into the beam by 1.25″ and attached the beam to the posts with a 10″ lag screw that was inset from the top by +2″. The joints were pre-sealed with Thompson’s and the entire thing was double coated with Thompson’s to keep it looking nice for the foreseeable future. There will be an additional 1″ board on top of the beam with a 1″ reveal all the way around – waiting on the red cedar to be delivered to my local lumber supplier.