A Little Help with the Fence

I had to go to Home Depot to try and get some fence issues taken care of and they were absolutely no help at all. Since they didn't have the same style of post caps anymore from when we put in the first length of fencing, I had to buy all new ones so that everything matched. I managed to get the first, "old" cap off to put the new one and and that is when I discovered something.... the new cap didn't fit on the old posts.

The new fence has posts that measure 5" x 5". However, the existing fence has 4.75" x 4.75" posts. So now I have 15 caps that I can't use. I'll save them because next summer I hope to finish the third side of the yard, so I'll use them eventually. But I didn't know what to do about the 13 posts that currently have the old gothic style caps. I went to Home Depot to see if someone could look up the material from the old order and see if it was possible to get the caps that would fit. The last couple of times I went there it was very easy to get someone to help me, last time, not so much.

I thought all they needed to do was to pull out the vinyl fencing book, look up my style, and then tell me, yes, I can get the caps for the smaller posts or no I can't. First, I had to wait for the girl behind the customer service counter. She was on the phone, and no one else was there. When she finished, or should I say, when she said hang on a minute, I have to take care of someone, I explained to her my situation. She looked at me very confused and said, "let me call someone". After waiting for a couple of minutes and talking to someone, she tells me that they don't have any vinyl fencing. I tell her, uh, no, I don't NEED to get any right this minute, all I need is for someone to help me look up the style of fence from the manufacturer to tell me if I can get a particular kind of cap for the posts that I currently have. So she sends me over to building materials to see a guy.

I go down there, meet this dude and proceed to give him an explanation of what I need. This is a guy who helped me a couple of weeks ago when I needed to bring the old caps back and order the new ones. I figure this guy can help me for sure. Nope. After spending two minutes explaining the whole situation, he says, let me go get "X" and see if he can help you out. On to customer service helper #3 now. Again, I give him the whole story, figuring that this guy for sure will pull out the binders, look up the style of fence, and tell me what I need to do. I was wrong again.

After going through everything again, he says that he doesn't think that they can help. He says they will probably have to call the fence company directly and talk to them. Unfortunately, it is 8:00 east coast time now so I'll have to come back to Home Depot one day during normal business hours. The Pro Desk guy can then call up the fence company directly and should be able to help me get what I need.

So I wasted almost 20 minutes there last night trying to get an answer to a simple question. They were almost no help at all.

Then once I got home I looked up the fence on their website, because I knew that they had different size posts, 4 x 4 and 5 x 5, so they had to have more than one size of cap for it. after about 5 minutes of looking around and searching, I found another style cap that said it was for a 5 x 5 post (they had two of the same style for 5 x 5 posts, one being about $1 cheaper than the other). I knew what it cost for the ones I just got, so I clicked the one that was $1 cheaper, and rad the description... it said compatible with posts that are 4.75 x 4.75. BINGO! So I ordered them online and had them shipped directly to my house. They will be here in 3-5 business days. Looks like I will be able to get my fence finished before there is snow on the ground.Now was that so tough? All the clowns at the store needed to do was look up the fencing in their computer and they could have told me, "yes sir. We can get you the caps you need". Apparently that was too difficult.

Almost Done

Last week Tuesday I finished putting the last panel and post in on the fence. I finished it up in the dark, but I wanted to get it complete. I had to cut the final panel to fit, and I wasn't quite sure how to do it, but after taking a quick look, I figured out where to cut to trim it down without ruining anything.

So today I removed the plastic I had covering the posts and slipped the new post caps on. I didn't glue them down just yet though. I wanted to make sure I get the old ones off the first length of fence and that everything is good to go before doing it. I was working on one of the posts and I think that should come off with a little work without any problems.

Then is was time to finally clean up the piles of dirt I had left in the yard from digging the post holes. I had quite a bit and I wanted to try and save some of it to build up a few low spots, like around the girls' playset, and I want to expand out the patio next spring and want to have a little fill to go under it so I don't need to use so much sand. The problem is that the majority of it is clay, so I'll still need to get a bit of top soil to go on top of everything, I think I can seed it now and it'll come up in the spring. At least I hope so.

Sweet Win

The Brewers are up 1-0 on the Cardinals in the NLCS. Once again Zach Grienke won at home. It wasn't pretty, giving up 6 runs, but a win is a win, only seven more to go until the Brewers are 2011 World Series champions.

I didn't get to see much of the game since I was outside working most of the day, but I did get to see the final two innings. I had the radio on though

The only thing that would be sweeter would be to sweep the Cardinals and send Tony LaRussa home crying like the big baby that he is.