My house is surrounded by neighbors’ fences of all sorts and styles, specifically wrought iron, dog-ear cedar, and chain-link. The better-half wants to finish off the front-facing sides of our yard with low-maintenance fencing to keep the little four-legged yappers out of the street.
A white vinyl picket fence would tie in well with the house trim and meet the aforementioned criteria. At first glance, it would seem that this would be a simple do-it-yourself project with just a couple of post holes and prefab fence sections.
The complication is this: both sides of the house require jogs in the fences to accommodate utility boxes on one side and additional posts to tie into the neighbor’s fence on the other, both of which are of non-standard spacing and would, ideally, include gates.
The options as I see them are: 1.) Pay out the rear for a custom vinyl fence job of a grand total of 40 feet of fencing; 2.) Tackle this project on my own with little experience working with vinyl products but presumably saving some cash on labor; 3.) Make a convincing argument to my wife that her dreams of a small, simple low-maintenance white picket fence are unreasonable and going with a 6-ft dog-ear fence that I install myself; 4.) Paying out the butt for a professional to install a grand total of 40 feet of dog-ear cedar while dashing my wife’s dreams.
We are getting a couple free quotes from fencing companies, but I thought I’d draw on the knowledge and experience of Dopers before the sticker shock factors in.
What would you do?