Saving Grace

While the husband and I are contemplating picket fence designs and porch railings for the front of the house, we know we are pretty much stuck with the chain link fence in the back that came with the house when we bought it.

It is not pretty.

BUT ...

It's a serviceable fence, it's sturdy and goes all around our property  keeping puppies in and other people's puppies out and well, it's a fence. It also makes it hard for bad people to do bad things hidden from sight and opens up the view to the back alley so there's no sneaking around - at least not along our property line. Also, a new fence in the back is just not in the budget right now with all the other things we want to accomplish (and have to pay for).

So, it stays.

However, there are ways to make it a bit less 'blah'.

Remember how I subtitled one picture of Miss Mattie's make-over with a hint of things to come? Well, one of the little projects we tackled during the make-over was simply BRILLIANT. BRILLIANT, I say.
We spray-painted her chain link fence!
We. SPRAY-PAINTED it.
Black.
It made all the difference!

 [Before]

So, on Saturday, at the crack of dawn as you can see in the picture I snuck (sneaked?) heavily armed with several cans of Rust-o-leum enamel spray paint in black and went to work.

 

 [In progress!]

Fair warning: it takes a LOT of spray paint, especially when you are also trying to paint the wire mesh, and the cans created a hideous overspray. My feet and arms are still bespeckled with black.

Other than that, the effect is simply beautiful.

 

[After]

All glossy black, the ugly chainlink fence transforms into something more resembling wrought-iron fencing and looks a lot less "cheapo."

 [After: So glossy!]

It took a whole large can (the one with "25% more content") to spray-paint the small gate so for the remainder of the fence, I decided to skip the wire mesh and just spray paint the main posts instead for now.
Then I put the lattice panel back into place and thought that adding lattice panels instead of painting the mesh might be another idea to pursue and tabled the decision for later. It's a work in progress, after all. Right? For now, I'm pretty happy with my chain link fence make-over.

And so is the husband who is usually not all that excited about his wife spray-painting stuff :o)