And just like that, we have a fenced-in yard!!! Well, I guess it wasn’t really quite that simple, but all the stress and impatience is behind us now that the work is finally done. We’re feeling oh-so-great about this decision, and genuinely feel like it was worth every penny.

In case you missed the original introductory post about this project, click back here to get caught up. Essentially, though, we adopted an older rescue dog back in March, and it wasn’t long before we caught on to the fact she needed a fenced yard. We suspect that she was initially house-trained using a fenced yard because it took her ages to go to the bathroom on our leashed walks in the neighborhood.

At first we thought it was just a quirk of hers and that she only needed to go twice a day, but then we took her to my parents’ fenced-in yard and she immediately went to the bathroom. Then the same thing happened every single time we brought her over to their place.

Long story short (ish), we decided to invest in a new fence for her sake, but also to allow us to close in our yard from the neighbors a little bit, and to add value to our home. The photos you see below are of our yard before the fence was installed. The little orange flags marked our plans for the fence.

We decided to include one small hill on one side of our home so that our dog had enough room to run around if she wanted to, and we also enclosed our shed and platform deck within the bounds of the fence. We had briefly thought about putting the fence on the inside of our privacy trees, but ultimately decided to enclose those in the fence, too.

We thought through several different fencing options throughout this project, but chain-link was the one for us. It’s low maintenance (no need to stain or treat it like you would a wooden fence), durable, one of the more inexpensive options on the market, and we also felt like chain-link was era-specific for our home in a way. Chain-link fences came into “fashion” during the mid-century, so it seemed like a good fit for our 1960s ranch. Probably the more mid-century option would have been to go with something like white picket, but that isn’t quite modern enough for our taste. For all those reasons, we settled on chain-link, but decided to have it done in black to make it feel a little more stylish and mod.

We got two different quotes for the fence, chose one after hearing both estimates, and then waited about a month before the crew was able to come out and complete the work. They speculated to me the morning they started that work might have to be done over the course of two days, but they ended up completing the entire thing in just four or five hours on day one! We were super impressed with their work, and everything has been functioning beautifully since that day.

The cost of the fence came in at just under $4,000, by the way, and we used L&O Fencing if you’re local to the Waynesboro area. I’m sure it would have been vastly cheaper if we had done this two or even one year ago, but inflation and supply chain issues drove the price up for us.

Want to hear the best news of all? The very first time we let our dog loose in her new yard, she did her business. I know all of this bathroom talk is probably a little “TMI,” but that moment was pretty darn awesome for us as pet parents. She loves her new outdoor space, and we are enjoying it a lot more than we thought we would, too. The black fence is really sleek and modern—exactly what we were hoping for—and it definitely gives us more of a sense of privacy from our extra-close neighbors.

Would you ever consider a chain-link fence? Did I make you reconsider your dislike for it with my suggestion to go with black over the traditional silver galvanized steel? We couldn’t be happier with the final look and function of our new fenced-in yard, and I think our pup agrees, which, frankly, is all that really matters!