DIY Building a Fence
- 1). Draw the path of the fence on a piece of paper. Include all the major features of your property on the paper, including houses, sheds and landscape features. Make a mark where each fence post will go, spacing them no more than ten feet apart and ideally around eight feet apart, as your fence rails will normally come in 8-foot lengths.
- 2). Transfer your layout to your actual property, using stakes and string. Place a stake in the ground where every fence post will go. Tie a piece of string to a corner, end or gate post, and run it to the next corner, gate or end post. Use this string to align the line posts in between these posts and adjust the stakes as necessary. Do this for the entire fence.
- 3). Cut your fence posts to size out of 4-by-4 or 6-by-6 lumber. Remember that one-third of the fence posts will be underground, so a 4-foot-tall fence will need fence posts that are 6 feet long.
- 4). Dig holes with the post hole digger where every post will go. The depth of the hole should be at least 24 inches deep, or deeper for fences over four-feet tall. Use the spade to dig out the bottom of the hole, making the bottom wider than the top, to prevent a ground freeze from pushing the post out of the ground.
- 5). Mix concrete and water according to the directions on the bag of pre-mixed concrete. Pour the concrete into a hole and then place a post in. Adjust the post so that it is perfectly vertical and rotate it so that its faces are pointed directly at the line of the fence. Repeat this process for every post.
- 6). Measure the distance between every fence post and cut your rails to length out of 2-by-4 or 2-by-6 lumber. The exact length of each rail will depend on how you will attach them to the posts. You can place them on one side of the post and drill a screw through the rail and into the post, or you can install brackets on the faces of the post and attach the rails to brackets. Once you know how the rails will attach, take your measurements and cut the rails.
- 7). Wait 24 hours for the cement to harden before you continue.
- 8). Attach the rails to the posts using wood screws. The exact process will depend on your chosen method of attaching the rails. You can drill the rails directly into the outside or inside faces of the posts, or you can install brackets on the sides of the posts that face each other, and then slide the rails into place in the brackets.
- 9). Cut and attach additional fencing material as needed. You can create wood panels to hang on the rails for maximum privacy, or you can simply attach a few wooden pickets to the rails. You can even leave it as it is, as a post-and-rail wood fence.
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