How to Build a Fence
Everything I learned spending a month and too much money building a fence.
Setting the Posts
I wanted metal fence posts for a few reasons. First, I live somewhere with real frost heave, and I didn't want to pour concrete footings only to have a wavy fence in five years. Second, steel resists rot and weather better than a wood post ever will. Third, pretty much everyone online said it was the right call. I'm glad I made that choice, but it came with its own headaches.
The first problem was driving them. The Lifetime steel posts I bought only fit a powered post driver if you buy an extra chuck (I didn't know that going in). I tried a manual driver with a 6-inch opening first. Don't do this. I couldn't use my hands for two days afterward and only got about five posts in. I ended up renting a gas-powered driver from the local hardware store and cutting the posts down with an angle grinder so they'd fit the chuck. That combination worked well, though keep in mind my fence was under 4 feet and never had to deal with real wind load, if yours is taller, budget for the right equipment from the start.
The part I didn't see coming was how hard it is to keep posts aligned, plumb on both axes, and rotated correctly while driving them. There's no substitute for spraying and praying, get a second person to help and expect a rock to throw a post out of alignment even after two feet of driving. Mine ended up within about an inch of true, which was good enough for posts spaced five feet apart. A few rotated slightly during the drive; that's normal and not worth losing sleep over. Getting them plumb on both axes felt like pure luck. Physically, this was the hardest part of the whole build. It was also the most planning-intensive, call your local utility locator before you touch a shovel.
Framing
Lumber choice is personal, but I went with redwood. My local supplier had a lot of it in stock and in more dimensions than their cedar, so I didn't have to rip down 2x4s into 2x2s myself. It's also more water-resistant and harder than cedar, and (no small thing) it just looks great.
The frame is 2x4s running horizontally between the posts, 2x2s vertically against the posts, 1x6 pickets on the front and back, and 1x4s as a cap. I finished everything with a penetrating oil rather than a film-forming stain. As a fairly novice woodworker, that felt like the right tradeoff. It's easier to reapply every year and does a decent job slowing UV damage without ever needing to be stripped. I coated all six sides of every board, plus the end grain, as I made each cut.
Hog Panels
For the infill I used welded wire hog panels set into an aluminum track kit rather than routing a dado groove into the wood myself. I don't own a table saw and didn't want to rent one just for that. The track also frames the panel cleanly and adds a nice finished edge. It's not cheap, but I think it's worth it.
Gates
The front gate is an off-the-shelf adjustable gate kit, buy the size you need, trim it to fit and done. The side gate was a real project. It sits in a high-traffic spot, needed to span over 5 feet, and only had partial concrete underneath it to roll on.
A swing gate or bi-fold wouldn't have worked. I wanted it completely out of the way when open, without building an arch over half the walkway. Most sliding gate builds I found online assumed solid ground the whole length of travel, which I didn't have. My workaround was a roughly 2-foot overlap between the gate and the fence when closed, riding on a pair of unistrut trolleys for alignment and support, with a small caster wheel on the far side and an adjustable bumpstop to keep it from ever rolling off the concrete. Somehow it all worked, and it slides easily.
The gate itself is framed with 1x6s joined by heavy-duty corner brackets, on the theory that two boards bolted together would cancel out each other's warping over time. I added four stay rollers to keep it tracking straight, plus some trim to hide the seams from using leftover material.
Hardware
Fasteners are all stainless steel: bolts, nuts, screws. It added up fast, but I didn't want rust streaks bleeding into redwood in a few years. The unistrut and stay rollers on the sliding gate are galvanized since stainless wasn't an option there. The posts and hog panels are steel; anywhere I had to cut into them, I hit the exposed metal with rust-preventing paint, both spray and brush-on. The aluminum track kit got a few weep holes drilled into the bottom rail to keep water from pooling and oxidizing it.
Cost and Time
I didn't cut corners on materials, and it shows in the total: about $4.5k all-in. That's a lot for a DIY project, but stainless steel, redwood, and aluminum aren't cheap, and I wanted this to last decades, not years. I did every bit of the work myself, and between the posts, framing, panels, gates, and finishing, it came out to roughly 150 hours, not counting the planning and research beforehand.
Bonus: The Mailbox
One goal of the whole project was letting our dog hang out in the front yard and meet neighbors and their dogs as they walk by. That meant we didn't want delivery drivers opening the gate and accidentally letting him out. So, as part of the build, I poured concrete for the first time in my life and set a locking parcel vault by the front walk so packages never require opening the gate at all. It's been one of the best small decisions of the whole project.
