Fence Repair

[dewaltdisney]

I had a well established Laurel tree go down that took out two concrete fence posts and two panels on my back garden boundary. I spent some time off over the last few weeks cutting the heavy wood and taking it to the dump in sections I could carry. Meanwhile, I was trying to source a fencing bloke to do the repair. I tried five, all but four did not reply and the fifth could not do the work until mid July. I reluctantly decided to do it myself and I realised that it was going to be hard but thought I would be okay if I paced it over a few days. The two concrete posts had been bent over so I used my angle grinder to cut the rods to take the top parts away. I used my trusty Titan SDS breaker to break these up to give me clean hardcore. Yesterday I spent about four hours digging and exposed most of the buried broken ends and broke out one edge of the concrete footings. I decided rather than try to extract the posts I would break them up with my SDS. Today I did that and the posts have been broken up leaving nice slots for the new posts on three sides in the existing concrete footing. I had the panels and posts delivered today and I asked the chap why was it so hard to get someone to do the job. He said that the fencers only want big jobs and do not want to mess around with smaller repair work. I thought typical of today. Tomorrow I have a friend and his son coming to help me put the new posts and panels in as I cannot do it on my own, so hopefully I can see an end to this job which I would have done much quicker if I was younger.

Don't get old.

DWD

[Gadget]

I know the feeling...

[etaf]

I suspect the end result will be much better

That seems to be normal these days , nobody wants the small jobs and by small - i mean quite large things for home owners.
I needed a wall rebuilt and asked 5 people - only 3 bothered to quote , 1 without looking at it at all , and would not be available for 3 months , the other further discussed on phone and then no further replies from him, the 3rd we pinned down on the quote and got the job done, and paid well over the price for that , but also had them back for other work , and just accepted the price they quoted.
I suspect theres to much New build work and places having a lot of work done.

Another was a cloakroom , again asked a few people , most did not bother to turnup and clearly not interested in redoing a cloackroom at all - 1 quoted £2,500 which did not include replacing the floor, any of the fittings, toilet,sink, as we where supplying that anyway , and the tiling , he needed to confirm with some oneelse , so that was not a quote but a guesstimate
SO i did that myself ,

i'm sort of resigned now to having to do things myself now

[dewaltdisney]

Yes, it seems that way, it is usual now for trades to pick and choose jobs. Even the chancers do that now when they are incapable of doing the job in the first place and they do not respond. I finished my fence off this morning with help from my son's father in law (same age) and his son. Between us, we got the posts and panels in and although it is not as perfect as I would like, it was a difficult corner, it is quite hidden so not in my face. The main thing is we feel secure now with a complete boundary fence, not that there is any threat. What a bloody job, I would have happily paid a fencer £500, it cost me £150 for materials and no doubt a few beers along the way as thanks.

DWD

[etaf]

i dont suppose a fencer would be interested for £500 these days.