Fence Picket Flag: Texas Edition

One of my favorite projects for decor last year was my Fence Picket American Flag.  Well, I decided to do another, this time a Texas Flag.

Now, not a Native Texan, but both of my children are.  I also don't mind being patriotic and Texas has treated us well.  I could deal without the 100+ degree weather in the summer, but overall, Texas is pretty great and I am okay with celebrating that.

Both of my flags were done to the correct proportions.  This is why the Texas flag looks smaller than the American flag.  Other than cutting off a portion of the fence pickets, the process was the exact same in the construction.

It looks pretty great hanging on our fence.  Don't mind the large pile of stone, we are turning that into a patio...hopefully sometime this summer.

We (Almost) Have A Fence

As you saw here, we are building a fence.  It's been long overdue but it is almost completely up.  We only have one gate to go and it's done!  YAY, Doing the happy dance!  It was a lot of hard work done mostly by the men, but I worked hard in a completely different way.  I watched the kids and made sure everyone was hydrated, fed and happy.  I did however get to at least try out our new nail gun purchased from Harbor Freight.  I couldn't pass up the opportunity to try out a new power tool!

Nail guns, seriously just make short work out of nailing anything.  It also makes a really cool noise every time you fire it.  Have I mentioned that I love guns?  Oh, really, I haven't...well, I love guns and shooting (bullets or nails) is just plain fun. 

Yup, I loved it!  The only thing I didn't love was how heavy it was, but being a mommy, I now have mommy guns (crazy strong arms) from toting kids around all the time.  I didn't mind the weight that much, but I also didn't do a ton of nailing.  I only got to sneak out while kiddos were sleeping.

Our fence wouldn't be almost complete without the help of our awesome neighbor's nephew, Tyler.  We hire him often for grunt work and he earns his money.  I love that kid's work ethic.

I also have to mention his dad, Pat.  If you saw my previous post about working smarter, you would know that Pat is the man!  Thanks Pat!  Your experience is invaluable.  I am sure we will consult you on something in the near future.

And last, but certainly NOT LEAST, my super sexy hubby.  You are fantastic and I totally don't mind seeing you all sweaty and sexy and toting around power tools.  I also love/hate your wanting everything to be super perfect.  In the case of the fence, I loved it! 

There is no super duper reveal with the fence, because, well...it's a fence.  I also need to desperately landscape my yard and have been waiting until we had a fence to do that.  We are also in the process of getting rid of debris.  So, I promise, down the road I will show you better photos of my new fence.

Work Smarter, Not Harder

The current undertaking that is happening at my house this weekend is a new fence.  We have had up a partial wooden fence (being only held up by my crepe myrtles) and chicken wire to finish of the rest of it.  So, it all had to come down yesterday and the new posts went in.  We have a guy helping us out who has been doing all sorts of manual labor for many years and shared this trick with us and I am now sharing it with you.

We had some fence posts from the old fence that were encased in our concrete patio.  (Definitely not something we did).  So in order to save our patio and get the post out, Pat (the guy helping us) showed my husband a neat little trick.

(that's my sexy husband)

Grab your drill, a hammer (or in our case, a FUBAR), a hydrolic jack and a metal rod.

Line up your jack, drill a hold slightly higher than the jack. 
Hammer your metal rod into place.
Use the jack to pick the post up out of the encased concrete.  Pure Genius!

Do you see all the concrete?  I can't believe it made it look SOOOO easy!  We removed three posts this way and two of them came up like butter!  The third already had significant rot, so it busted at the soil level.

The empty hole after we removed a post.  That one was down there over two feet because it was a corner post. We set the new posts to the side of the patio.

Thank you Pat!  You are the man!

Oh and the other interesting thing today, we came across baby squirrels.  Why not show those off too!  This is one of the two we came across...who is now living back inside the walls of our house, NOT BY CHOICE!  We had them locked up and they were let out while hubby and I were at Lowe's and mama came right away to put them back in our house.  Down here, squirrels are worse than rats when it comes to finding a way into your house to nest.  Cute, but so destructive.