Painting Pickets
One of Oysterville’s distinctions is its many picket fences. Most, though not all, of the homes along Territory Road are set off by wooden pickets marching around their perimeters. The pickets come in a variety of shapes and heights. Some are painted; some not. Some are quite tall; some not. There are pointy-topped pickets, squared-off pickets, rounded pickets and slanty pickets. Some are evenly spaced along their rails and those of at least one fence are decoratively arranged with a larger space between each picket pair.
I’m not sure of the average life of a picket fence. I’m speaking of real-for-sure wooden pickets here, not the perfect white plastic variety. Tempting though those are longevity-wise, they don’t have the proper ambiance for Oysterville. Plus, they would never pass the Design Review Board’s requirement for authentic materials – it’s wood frame windows, cedar shingles, and wooden fences in the National Historic District.
Right now, I’m super-aware of the fence situation here in town. Our north fence is literally falling down. The posts and rails of all thirteen sections need to be replaced. Most of the pickets are still good, but they need repainting. We got an estimate from a fencing outfit. Oh my!
Actually, we got two estimates – one involved salvaging the pickets and the other was for complete replacement. There wasn’t that much difference in cost. I’m sure it was a fair estimate, but suffice it to say that it came to more than I make through my writing in a year and to about the same amount that Nyel makes for a year’s work as a substitute teacher. And that was just for the north side!
So, section by section and picket by picket, Nyel is repairing and re-painting our fence. The scary part is that sections of the west fence and the entire south fence also need replacement. It may be one of those Forever Projects.
It’s not even very comforting to realize that several of our neighbors are in the same boat. I don’t know if there was a fencing flurry forty years ago (which is when ours went up) and they’ve just reached the end of their useful lifespan, or if the last few winters have been extra hard on our perimeters. Whatever the reason, there will undoubtedly be lots of picketing going on in Oysterville in the months to come. Picketing with guaranteed positive results!
Originally we’d put up a wooden picket fence at our house in Ilwaco, but then it began to rot I caved in to Dave’s sales pitch for a plastic fence and it’s been a nightmare. If you look at the pickets too hard they fall off the fence and we haven’t discovered the glue that will secure them. The biggest problem was that we’d painted the original fence. Painting much of anything on the Peninsula IS pretty much a forever project. I’ve now converted Dave and we’ve got new unpainted siding on two sides of the house. Sigh. It will get done eventually as will the pitiful plastic fence get replaced.