Present Joys

Our fence isn’t so new anymore and it’s already starting to turn grey in places. I dithered for a long time about whether to finish it or not. It’s 220 feet long—not something that’s painted quickly. But seeing it turn grey guilted me into maintaining it a little bit.

So I decided this would be the ideal opportunity to test out a completely new-to-me finishing method: linseed oil paint. My friend Josh heard about this and turned me onto it early last year. (Josh is almost certainly one of the only people who will ever read this post. Hi, Josh!) The paint is simply a pigment (ground up natural color) blended into linseed oil which penetrates the wood deeply and allows the material to continue “breathing” in a way no modern paint does. When applied to bare wood, it’s supposed to form a unique system which requires very little maintenance and is physically incapable of flaking off. It sounds too good to be true, and soon I’ll find out for myself if it is.

I’m fairly well-read in historic building maintenance and so was shocked I’d never heard of this, but I think the reason is because it hasn’t really been a thing until very recently. Although linseed oil paint is extremely historic, it’s only made a comeback in Europe in the last 50 years or so, and has been virtually unknown in the US until the past few years.

I still haven’t purchased the paint itself. I’m still trying to figure out the exact color and quantity I need. But this we took the first step toward the linseed paint dream, which is to apply a primer coat of raw linseed oil to the bare wood. A five-gallon pail of oil only got us about a third of the way. Yikes… the wood is thirsty. I am hoping the more pure oil I apply now, the less (more expensive) paint I will need to apply later. This is all new for me.

The fence we inherited with this property was actively falling down ever since we bought it. Plus, it was installed about four feet off the property line along the side of our lot, wasting a lot of usable yard space. It also didn’t consistently follow the back of the lot. Clearly, it was the product of several phases and no clear plan. I tore out the old fence several months ago because it just literally wouldn’t stay up any longer. So we’ve been operating without any back fence, and during that time we’ve had some theft and weird run-ins with pedestrians in the alley. It’s way past time to get a new fence back in.

The new fence is 220 lineal feet long and consists of quirky asymmetrical gothic-style pickets. This was the result of a miscommunication between me and the contractor (who, incidentally, was perfectly fantastic—let me know if you need a new fence). I told him I didn’t want standard dogear pickets, so we settled on gothic-style pointed pickets. The ones he special-ordered for us were wider than we’d originally planned on, so he generously agreed to rip all the pickets in half to give the fence a more refined, historic appearance.

It’s just a privacy fence, but it looks beautiful and it’s unique and we really needed it. And don’t those beech trees look nice!