The front of the house had always felt unfinished. The old fence was tired, and the driveway — despite the work that had already gone into it — needed something to frame it properly.

The conservation area we live in has a specific style requirement: alternating groups of three long slats and three short slats. I wanted to get it right, so before a single post went in the ground, I built every panel in the workshop first.

That preparation phase was longer than expected. I ripped down around 70 metres of timber for the slats alone — a full week at the table saw — and staining each panel was another significant chunk of time. My two girls helped with the staining, which made it go faster, was considerably more chaotic but a lot of fun, too.

The one section I wasn't sure about was the run of panels along the roadside edge of the driveway. With no soil to dig into, the posts needed to be fixed directly to the concrete using post shoes and a surface-mounted post support bracket. I had doubts about whether it would be rigid enough — a fence along a road boundary takes more knocks than one tucked away at the side of a garden. In the end it was not a problem. The fixing into the concrete has proven extremely stable, far more so than I expected, and there is no flex or movement in it at all.

Once all the panels were done, the installation itself was the enjoyable part. Everything was ready, the posts went in, the panels went up, and within a week the front of the house looked completely different.

I knew a fence would improve things. I didn't quite anticipate how much. The driveway looks intentional now. The house looks finished. Sometimes the last piece of a project is the one that makes everything else click into place.