This fence project involved removal and installation of roughly 100 linear feet of wood picket fence. The demo phase included cutting up the pickets and rails, leaving only the 4 x 4 posts, and is where you will find Pro TIP #2! After the sections were loaded and hauled to the dump the fun begins in building each section again.

In this section you can see the how the project moved through the different stages of construction. With each major phase or ” STEP” I like to include a gallery, as well as some description of the processes and challenges in that particular part of project.

The first step to this project is demolish the existing fence panels and leave the 4 x 4 posts intact for reuse. The average weight for a single 6 foot x 8 foot section of picket fence is approximately 100 lbs. Now this may or may not sound like a lot to you, but the nearly 100 feet of fence panels, when they all cut and loaded and brought to the transfer station weighed a total of just over 1,000 pounds! That’s half a ton for those who like math…

That brings us to the Pro TIP #2! The way to demo 1,000 lbs of fence and make it fit in your truck in one load is to use math, of course lol! But in all seriousness, measure the width of your truck body, mine is just over 5 feet, or 60 inches. Simply count the number of pickets on the panel and determine how many pickets will be equal to or slightly less than your measurement. For this project, the pickets were 5.5 inches wide and had an 1/8 spacing, so that worked out to 10 pickets (just a few inches less than 5 feet). Now with a heavy duty reciprocating saw cut the rails of the existing panels, while attached to the posts) at every 10 pickets. Then you carefully pry the rails off the posts to free the cut panel section. The last part of this process is critical. You must stack the cut pieces of panel in pairs. To get a visual for how this will work lay one piece on the ground with pickets facing down, then lay your next piece on top with pickets facing up towards you. Make certain that the rails fall next to each other, instead of stacking on top each other. This will make your stack much more compact and you will be able to pack the pieces in tightly.

We built this fence using the old 4 x 4’s, added 36 new 2×4 rails at 8 feet long, and nailed up 194 dog ear pickets. The pickets were 5/8 in thick, 6 foot high, and 5.5 in wide made of pressure treated pine. Once our panels and rails are demolished we need to start re-building the fence. 

To start take your 2×4 at 8 feet in length and hold it up to the first pair of posts. Cut it to length so that the rail lands in the middle of the next post, (this allows for the next rail to grab an equal amount of the post for nailing.) Nail your rails up, 3 per section, the bottom roughly 6 inches above the ground, the top 6 inches below the top of the picket, and place the middle rail roughly equidistant from the others. Work your way down all the sections building all the rails at one time.

Next you are ready to nail up your pickets. I staged them about 10 or 12 in a pile all along the fence, leaning on the outside of the rails. That way as I was working my down the line my materials were right there for me. You’ll need a good 4 foot or larger level, a spade shovel to dig out the ground as it moves up and down on your fence line. Keep your spacing consistent and nail the picket a the top outside corner and set the spacing before nailing the rest of the rails. I find that using a galvanized ring shank nail works best and gives long lasting, rust free, fastening for pickets. I use 2 nails per rail, i’ve seen many fences installed with both 3 nails per rail and 2 nails per rail, but it doesn’t seem to adversely affect the longevity of the fence to use only two.