10.16.04 Here's a few pictures of a fence I built in Beaverton, Oregon. It's my first fence...I designed the sucker too. This is pretty much the first woodworking project I've done since shop class in High School. No, I took no lessons, had no expert help and had no plans to work from. It all started in my head (as usual). The entire fence is held together with lag bolts, so every piece is replaceable, as well as making the entire fence rather indestructible. Each and every piece of wood was fully treated for moisture and insects before being put in place. The only nails I used were to hold the facia boards in place. It has a built in low voltage lighting system, consisting of a number of carriage lamps converted from 120V use. Also, when I was building this fence, I put in some driveway lights, reminiscent of 'turnpike lights', basically just a piece of 4x4 slanted 45 degrees at the peak with a low voltage light shining down on the drive and path.

The first picture here is a copy of the ad which originally appeared when we were house shopping. It gives a small indiciation of how barren this house looked before I did my thing. I did most of the landscaping. There's another picture of yours truly standing like a farmer ready to start diggin up the field. I put a lot of pictures up here just to give an idea of the scope and the impact this fence had on an entire neighborhood.

I've had people drive by and literally stop traffic to get a better look at it. Despite it's obvious charm, graceful design and immense beauty, the pictures hardly do it justice. The only way to really enjoy it is by driving down the street and seeing how drastically it stands out from everything else around it, while totally blending in with the natural surroundings. The design has a Frank Lloyd Wright aesthetic to it, I'm quite proud to say.

It iincludes a special feature built just for my dog: doggy windows. He used to love just laying in the yard checking out all the canine babeage in the 'hood'. I didn't want to totally deprive him of that pleasure when I built the fence. In a couple of the photos you can also see a shutter that I built to block out the neighbors' garage lights at night, but I could open them when we're chatting.

Sadly, as the last boards were put into place, we regretably had to place the house up for sale because of financial difficulties. The house sold in 5 days. I certainly left my mark on the town of Beaverton, as evidenced by my work of art here.

More works of art in other disciplines will appear here from time to time. I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed creating them. Cheers.