New Backyard Addition – Black Aluminum Fence

We added another big, and expensive, addition to the backyard last week– a black aluminum fence.

To recap, one year ago, the back of our house looked like this.

Then, in August of last year, we had a deck and pergola built.

And on Friday of last week, we got a fence.

A fence was always in our plans because we live on a small lake with young kids. Before we even moved into the house, we drove it into Owen that the water was dangerous, and he was never to go near it without an adult. I may or may not have also told him that the fish will eat his toes. But hey, he listened and never once went down by the water without us.

There are a few reasons why we didn’t have the fence put in immediately after we moved in two years ago. One reason was that Owen showed no interest in the water. Had he shown interest, we would’ve put in a fence in a lot sooner. The second reason was because we no longer had a dog. We re-homed our dog, Jack, of 9.5 years a couple months after moving into the house. You can read all about that here. And the third reason was because we wanted to get the deck and pergola built first so we could enjoy the outside space sooner and so the guys could easily get the lumber and equipment back behind the house.

But now with Emmett being more mobile, it was definitely time to pull the trigger.

We didn’t have much of a choice in terms of what type of fence we could have installed. Our neighborhood HOA only allows 4-foot tall black aluminum fences. There’s a few different styles, but they all look about the same. We went with a flat top aluminum fence because I like the clean lines. Plus, it ties into the black aluminum rails on the deck.

I’m not thrilled about this corner with the two small panels, but it is what it is. It’s not as visible from the deck. And as a friend pointed out, if it continues to bug me, I can always landscape this area and put a bigger bush in the corner to camouflage that section.

On the garage and driveway side of the house, we had a 10-foot wide double gate installed instead of a standard 4-foot wide gate like we have on the opposite side of the house. With the 10-foot gate, our lawn care guys will be able to easily maneuver their mowers and other equipment into the backyard. And, it’ll be a lot easier for us to move things in and out of the backyard.

If you follow me on Instagram and watch my Stories, you know how much I love this view. We get some pretty spectacular sunsets over those trees. I was fairly concerned about the fence obstructing our view of the water and trees.

But, as you can see, the view is still quite nice.

I like how the fence has better defined our our yard, which will make landscaping easier.

In case you’re wondering, we couldn’t extend the fence any closer to the water due to the Regulated Drainage Easement (RDE). This is so our county can easily access, inspect, etc. the water if needed. And we wouldn’t have wanted to extend it any further because, at a certain point, the yard starts to considerably slope down toward the water. So we’d basically waste money fencing in useless yard space.

Oh, and one last feature of the fence– it keeps these a-holes from crapping all over our yard and eating the grass.