Researching for Historical Accuracy - picket fences

Historical Accuracy is very important to me in restoring my house. So when JC posted a comment about my picket fence being historically accurate I decided to make a post on the research I did before building my fence.

Over the years I've seen numerous old house photos and one one of the things I noticed was that most houses that had picket fences used 1x1 square pickets instead of board pickets.

Here is a picture of a house here in Woodbury that was taken in 1908. At the right of the picture is a square picket fence.

 1908, Woodbury, Ga

Another thing I noticed was that a lot of these fences had alternating height pickets. I wanted to do something that would stand out a little so this seemed perfect.

Here are some pictures of alternating height square picket fences that I found while doing my research.

 Undated, Bryan Co, Ga

 1914, Columbia Co, Ga

 1905, Decatur Co, Ga

 1890, Dekalb Co, Ga

 1909, Emanuel Co, Ga

 Undated, Franklin Co, Ga

 1898, Hancock Co, Ga

 1895, Montgomery Co, Ga

1870-1899, Schley Co, Ga

Every one of the pictures above has the alternating height, square pickets. Also, all the pictures are in the same time-frame of my house.

The one major difference in these fences and mine is the board that runs along the bottom in all of the others. I may add this board to my fence, I haven't decided yet.

Picket Fence

What started out as a quick trim-up of the bushes turned into a huge project.

The hedge I was trimming is the Boxwood hedge on the north side of the house, it has gotten extremely overgrown. Not to mention the 18' Oak trees growing up through them. I was holding back on cutting them down because they were great trees and was hoping someone would want them.

In the end I couldn't find anyone that wanted them so I started trimming the hedge with the intention of taking all the trees down. Once again I forgot to take a before picture but here is an in progress one.

The area inside the hedge is a small garden with Azaleas, Nandinas, and Camellias. It is also overgrown with weeds, small treess, and poison ivy everywhere. I cleared this area out once back in 2008, you can see what it looked like then here.

As I worked on it my wife and I got to talking about a picket fence for the front yard. we've talked about one before but never followed through. This time we decided to go price out the wood. After pricing the wood we decided to go ahead and do it.

The first step was to layout the fence line, I used chicken wire fence stakes and string. Then I spray painted a dot every 6 feet along the line for fence posts.

Next came the fun part, digging 45 fence post holes by hand. With the holes dug I installed the posts and concreted them in making sure they were perfectly level all the way around and in a perfectly straight line.

Next came the cross pieces and then finally the pickets. I had to make a jig for my miter saw to cut the points on all the pickets, all 500 of them. In the picture below you can see the jig with a fence picket in it ready to be cut. I ended up doing 2 at a time which sped up the process. I used the same jig in a different position to cut down half of the posts 2" since the fence will have alternating height pickets.

I created a picket with blocks on to get the proper spacing between pickets. For the first fence section I had to lay the pickets out in front of the fence to get the proper spacing. Once I knew how many pickets would fit in a given amount of space I used that to figure out how far in to start the first picket on each section.

In the above picture you can see my spacer picket, I clamped it in place so my hands were free to screw the next picket into place. In the subsequent sections I also clamped a 2x4 to the bottom board to get the bottom of the pickets at the correct height easily.

The fence has 3 gates, a double gate at the front and one on either side near the back of the fence.

 Front gates

 North side gate

South side gate

Anyone see anything wrong with the two side gates?

The north side gate goes to the neighbors yard, which just so happens to be my mother. The south side gate goes to the driveway, there is a drop-off here so I will build a couple of brick steps here.

Once I finished the fence I got back to work on the hedge and removed all the weeds, trees, and sprayed the poison ivy.

Here are some pictures of the completed fence (and boxwood hedge).

The corner posts and the side gate posts have decorative caps on them, the main gate posts have decorative caps with a ball on top, and the rest of the posts are beveled at the top.

The jury is still out on whether to paint the fence white or just use a sealer on it. I think painting it white (our trim color on the house) would look the best but I'm not looking forward to the upkeep.

Here's a before and after of the north side of the house and yard. The before was taken in Sep 2007 a few months before we bought the house.

Finishing up the fence... for now

I finally finished the fence this weekend. I still have more fence to put up but I have the back yard completely closed in so our dogs can go outside and run when they want to now.

Here is a picture of the Plat with the fence drawn in:


The green lines are the sections of fence that are complete, the blue lines near the back of the house is a smaller 4' fence I built to section off the side yard from the rest of the yard. The red lines are the sections of fence that I haven't done yet.

The final section that needed to be completed since the last post was the smaller 4' fence. This fence surrounds an old brick patio that I discovered.

First I put in the posts:



To do this I had to cut the boxwood bushes way back, as I cut the bushes back I discovered a brick walkway between them that leads out to the side yard. I had planned on putting a small gate in the middle of the fence but I moved the location to the edge to line up with the walkway.

By the way, the brick patio is under all the weeds. leaves, and dirt in the pictures, I haven't finished uncovering them yet. The patio appears to be about 15'x20'.

Here is a picture of the newly discovered walkway and the new fence behind it:


And here are two pictures of the 4' fence and patio area. In the second picture you can make out a small portion of the patio under the dirt, it's a basket-weave pattern.



The boards over the opening next to the house are temporary, I will be putting in a set of double gates here. Also, I left the fence posts long for now because I haven't decided what to do with them yet. I may cut them off at 6' and mount lights on each one or I may cut them lower and put some kind of topper on them.

Once the fence was finished I turned my attention to some indoor projects. The side hall was closed off with a wall to make a small bathroom in the early 20's, they also added-on a larger second room at the end of the side hall from what used to be a porch. there was no need for a 2 room bathroom so I tore down the wall back in March to return it to a side hall.

This is how the side hall has looked since then:

I finally got tired of looking at the bare lathe and hung the sheetrock. I still have more of it to hang though, hopefully I can finish that off today so I can mud it.


I also wired up the ceiling fixtures here and in the main bathroom. For now I just have some art-deco looking fixtures that I found in the upstairs bedrooms. We'll be looking for antique chandeliers to replace them soon.


The finish looks brass in the picture but it's actually nickel.

I'll be doing more electrical today.

Fence Gates

I haven't had time to post in the last week but I've gotten a lot done on the fence.

Last weekend I worked on the double driveway gates. I had someone weld up 2 frames out of angle iron for the gates. They are 10' by 5' each.


I painted them and the hinges with Rustoleum gloss black paint.


Then I attached one dog-ear picket to the edge of the frame so I could attach the hinges.


Then I was able to prop the gate up against the post, I used a piece of 2x6 clamped to the edge of the gate to hold up the other side.


I used 6" hex head bolts to attach the hinges to the post.


With the gate hung I attached the dog-ears to the frame. to do this I had to first pre-drill each hole in the angle iron then screw the dog-ear in with deck screws.



Once I install the automatic gate openers I will finish off the little things that need to be done.

I've also completed most of the fence line.




I found this rat snake the other day while working on the fence, it looks like a rat or a squirrel bit him in a few places. We cleaned him up a bit then took him a few miles down the road to a creek with a lot of woods around it.