My picket fence and what we did with old windows!

I have two things that I just love! Picket fences and old windows.  Ever since we were married almost 16 years ago, I have wanted a cute little house with a white picket fence. I know it sounds corny but gardening is my passion! I especially love cottage gardens so the fence was always a dream of mine.

I also LOVE old windows. When my brother remodeled his house, I made sure hubby brought home all the leftover old windows from the 1920’s. He and my brother just shook their heads all the way back home! I’ve done several things with my old windows. Of course the good old stand-by mirror looks great in my purple kitchen. It’s also handy because I don’t have to turn around every time I talk to my family while I do the dishes.

Finally, after many years of scrimping and saving we got caught up and are debt free (except our house) so we decided to go ahead and put up my picket fence. We paid $800 for fencing that should have been $1500.

It was Labor Day weekend and Lowe’s was offering a coupon where, when you bought $50 or more, you would get $10 off. Each time you purchased something, the register would spit out another $10 off of $50 coupon.

It took us three hours to go to two stores for all of the supplies. In all, I made twenty transactions but saved $200 in coupons and another $500 because the fencing was on sale– $700 for three hours work is a great savings in my book!

I kept telling people who would get in line behind us that we were going to be a while and they were all fine with it and found another line. One lady decided to wait and I told her what I was doing. She said, “Cool, I’ll have to do that!” She had about $600 worth of stuff in her basket so she was glad for that tip!

Then we hauled it home in "old blue" after two pick-up loads and after going to two Lowe’s stores.

We installed the fence ourselves. Yes, it was a lot of work! It took us a full weekend and then about 10 hours after work for a week or two but we saved another $2000 by installing it ourselves. We did get the auger stuck and had to call in reinforcements (aka my brother and his wife) and they came over to help us finish digging the holes.  After measuring and measuring and measuring some more I am positive we have the straightest fence in the state of Kansas!

I just knew I had to have an arbor… OK, actually three arbors. Yes, hubby and my brother were once again shaking their heads, but we needed three the way our yard was arranged. After looking through some magazines, I got inspired for an arbor but didn’t like the trellis they had used on the side. As I was moving my windows around in the garage again, it hit me! I had enough windows to put on each of my arbors as a trellis!

And then I had my wonderful, long awaited  picket fence!

You can see that the flowers really love it!

I have to say when we decided to put our house on the market and move back to Colorado because prices had dropped, I just sat down and cried. I really wanted to go back to a better climate but didn’t want to move from my now cute house and I REALLY didn’t want to leave my picket fence. I have to say that the picket fence has been my absolute favorite thing about this house! I’m going to miss it but the mountains are calling me! Tawra