Fence Panels

Today I would like to share with you my inaptitude towards doing DIY.

I woke up this morning and was informed by my wife that one of the fence panels had blown down on the side of the garden that is our responsibility. I went to have a look, propped up the old fence panel, wedged the compost bin against it and went back inside. Job done. Or so I thought...

Apparently just wedging the panel in place is no way to fix a fence. I ended up going to B&Q. I wrestled with one of those extra long trolleys which appeared to have rear end steering so it took me ages to figure out how to push those weird things along. I eventually found the fence panels and struggled to get it onto the trolley. I bought a fence post and only crashed 4 or 5 times on the way to the checkout. I must remember to thank the kind lady who was working there though. 5 metres before I got to the checkout, she informed me that the trolley I was pushing was actually made for pulling... oops.

Anyhow, I got home, opened my book (also bought at B&Q) which tells me how to do every DIY job going in simple step by step diagrams. Not very manly I know, but hey, I'd rather follow instructions and have some chance of getting it right than guess and get it wrong.

It looked simple enough: "take out the old fence post, put the new one in, cement it in place(?!?!). Oops, I hadn't bought any cement...

I went outside to take the old fence post out. My book didn't tell me what to do if the fence post was rotten and broken off at ground level. I decided that maybe I could dig it out so for about an hour and a half I hacked away at the rotten wood. When I wasn't making much progress I resorted to using my drill. There I was drilling loads of holes into the rotten wood (I figured that if I drilled enough holes, eventually they would blend into one big square shaped hole...) when suddenly the drill bit broke off in the wood.

At that point I sort of gave up. I put the new fence post into the hole, which was now almost 6 inches deep, sawed off the end and nailed the fence panel to it. It has now been up for almost 5 hours.

I'm still waiting for the next gust of wind...