Deck Progress: How Add Privacy to A Picket Fence

Hi Friends, I have not done well at documenting my #1room30days deck refresh process thus far, so I’m going to try to play catch up in the next few posts.  I chose my deck for this challenge because since we’ve become a family of 6, we spend much more time at home  . . . Quite honestly, the hassle of getting 6 people ready and out the door is far too great, which is why I chose to make our outdoor space more comfortable and livable, almost like a destination—a place we want to be.  Today I am going to show you how I added privacy panels to our basic picket fence to make our deck feel a bit more secluded.  I previously explained, in my initial post , how the homes on our street are very closely situated, hence the need for a little extra privacy.

My idea was to add a little height to the fence, since getting a new fence was definitely out of the budget!

I snatched up some of these yard/garden stakes from Lowes, which came in a 6 pack for about $5 and some individual pine fence boards which are about 5/8″x5″x8′.  I chose these boards because they are thin and cheap, at only $1.86 a piece!

My supervisor was watching over me 😛

I simply laid out the boards and nailed the pickets into the landscape stakes using my nail gun.  I spaced them out using a large s’mores stick.

I left the garden stakes long as I plan to use them to hang the string lights and maybe even some lanterns, but it’s all about personal preference here.

 I let the privacy panel rest on the top horizontal bar of the existing fence and screwed the panel to the existing fence using 2.5 inch screws.

 I went ahead and added one extra board on this fence panel because it didn’t line up with the other fence panels, this way it kept the space looking a bit more uniform.

and here’s a full shot of where I was at this point:

 The panels were painted in Behr Private Black like the rest of the fence.  The backside of the fence will be trimmed out in lattice strips to hide the ends of the fence boards, so that it doesn’t look tacky on the neighbors end.  You could also just cut the end part off with a saw to get nice, thin, rectangular boards.

Here’s the fence panel before:

and here it is after:

Next up:

Bench Seating

Pillows, Pillows and more Pillows!

Deck extension

Landscaping and Styling

Somehow, I will manage to squeeze in some posts about these projects in the next week and a half!  I am just loving my space already and it’s not even done!  I don’t think I’ve spent as much time in our yard in ten years, that I have over the past coupe of weeks!

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