Fence futility

These homeowners must be wondering if they have been cursed by God.

Centerpointe Drive on the first curve northeastbound from Calder.

For the life of us, my daughter and I couldn't really understand how this happened, other than to acknowledge that it did not appear to be intentional.  There's a crushed utility marker out of photo view, suggesting an object went flying through the fence from the Centerpointe Drive side.   But it must not have been a very large object, because there were no deep tire tracks in the grass, and the shrubbery in front of the fence did not appear to be damaged.  So the whole "whodunit" is kind of ambiguous on this one. 

But this is the very same location where a crash in mid-2010 impacted multiple residential yards.

From the neighborhood newsletter at the time.

Anyway, for whatever reason, once again it appears these folks will be getting yet another new fence installed, before this replacement fence even had a chance to weather.

We lived on the outside of a street curve in one of my previous residences, and I swore I'd never do it again.  We had two people wreck into our yard inside of the three years that I lived there.  One of them was a teenager who lost his license for a number of years for reckless driving (the police calculated that he was doing upwards of 70 mph in a 25 mph zone).  That's reckless driving, not wreckless driving. 

Fence stain revisited

Did you read that the World's Ugliest Dog died of natural causes, namely old age?  It was national news the other day and, yes, in case you've been sleepwalking through the cultural component of your life for the past decade or two, there is a contest for the esteemed title of "world's ugliest dog". 

Houstonians are like any other geographically-defined group of people: they have their quirks, and the quirk that drives me the battiest is the one that makes people completely blind to the ugliness of their own fences.   All across Houston, people build impressive looking McMansions, a quarter million dollars and up, and then proceed to surround these suburban masterpieces with eight-hundred-dollar total-eyesore fences.  Why?!?  Can they not see that any good portrait is totally ruined if surrounded by garbage?

We can't have a World's Ugliest Fence contest in greater Houston because there would be so many spectacular entries that it would be impossible to declare a winner! 
:-)

In the "Structurally Intact But Degraded" competition category, who could possibly trump this?!
Centerpointe Drive about a quarter mile northeast of Calder.

It's been almost a year now since I published this post with before-and-after shots of our fence (and, by the way, the product we used, Olympic Waterproof Toner or whatever this year's name variant is, continues to look wonderful - no visible degradation or fading a year after application). 

But just in case you remained unconvinced by that initial post, I have another example to present here.  My in-laws are selling their house because of a job transfer.  After seeing their initial real estate listing on HAR, my husband and I decided to help them out by staining their fence the same way we did our own. 

Proof positive that any great art piece requires a FRAME.  The fence is the element that frames the property.  That's the initial real estate listing shot on the left, and our post-staining money shot on the right.  Neither photo has been digitally altered in terms of color saturation.  This is the same "Canyon Brown" stain shade as we used, but because their wood was a bit different in composition and age, this came out more cedar-toned than ours did.  Ours was a deeper brown shade.

There's simply no comparison.

Same yard, different angle, showing the job half done.
This fence was a uniform moldy grey color before pressure-washing.  With pressure-washing, it reverted to the blonder shade you see here.  This is lighter than most Houston builder-grade fences would become upon pressure washing, so this stain product would probably produce a deeper brown most of the time. 

Here in Centerpointe, we ended up with an unfortunate configuration in which an entire row of houses backs up to Centerpointe Drive, showing their rear ends, uh, I mean fences, to the world.  These days, civil engineers try to plat neighborhoods in such a way that all houses face the subdivision streets.  However, Centerpointe Drive is more of a thoroughfare than a subdivision street, and so we have this configuration: a solid mile of fences facing the road, fences that are only going to get worse-looking as time goes on.

The section of Centerpointe closest to Calder is the oldest, and its fences currently look the worst.

As I snapped the photo above, my husband asked me, "So who is responsible for maintaining that whole section of fence, anyway?  The POA or the individual homeowners?"

Danged good question and I don't know the answer to it (but when I find out, I will post below).  We all better hope that it's the POA because if there's anything uglier than a degraded cedar fence, it's a discontinuous degraded cedar fence where individual homeowners have all conducted section replacements at different times and in the inevitably-different styles that result from using multiple contractors. 

And the obvious question is... how much would it cost to clean and stain that mile of fences along Centerpointe? (And the fences line it on both sides, so it's actually two miles of fence).

I don't know.  I CAN tell you that the stain brand referenced above is about $0.80 per fence-foot retail price to apply, not figuring in labor for pressure-washing and labor for the stain application.  I also don't know how many years of extra life that kind of treatment adds to the fence, thus delaying replacement costs, and that's a very important question.  Those of us who paid to stain our own sections of interior yard fence have an interesting predicament: only one side of the fence is protected from water damage, mold and algae growth, and ultraviolet degradation from sunlight.  In our case, I essentially paid about two hundred bucks plus sweat equity to half-do a job.  If I knew how much lifespan the staining could add to the fence, I could tell you whether it's worth me spraying each of my neighbors' fence sides, just to make our shared asset last longer and potentially cost less over the longer term. 

Of course, that would leave those neighbors in the position of having to complete the rest of their own staining jobs, so you see what kind of a domino effect could result. 

I'm not sure what the best answers are here.  I only know that in our case, looking across our back yard to a moldy grey fence was not an option we were willing to accept. 

Would it be worth saving me from myself??

On the issue of subdivision gates

The following comment was included verbatim in the last neighborhood newsletter:

"I have asked several neighbors what their thoughts were about our neighborhood adding gated access for a one-time assessment fee.  I would feel much safer, and I think it would go a long way towards property value retention as well.   Is there a way to petition interest?  Those asked were all for it."

This is where I invite folks from the blogosphere to comment if they have specialized knowledge regarding this issue.  When I try to search for applicable regulations on the internet, what I get is too much legal detail and not enough 30,000-foot view (as some of the screengrabs below will illustrate), so the statements below might not be correct or complete. 

That being said, from the information I have been able to assemble, subdivision gates appear to be a non-starter for Centerpointe.  There's no use petitioning to see if there's support because even if 100% of residents express a preference for them, we lack the legal basis to install them even if by some miracle we could collectively afford the cost. 

Centerpointe's streets were originally platted (and remain) as public rights-of-way.   As such, it would seem that they cannot be impeded or restricted without major legal action which would probably involve vacating them AS public rights-of-way and getting them declared as private property instead.  After that point, our little POA (rather than the City of League City) would then be responsible for maintaining both the streets and the gates in perpetuity, with the streets being to a standard of quality equal to or better than similar public rights-of-way.  

(Not only that, if you start researching what it takes to administratively and functionally maintain gates, your hair might fall out from the enormity of it.) 

An anecdotal report seems to support the private property basis described above.  We have some friends in the well-known Sugar Creek subdivision in Sugar Land.   If you look at the entrance to Sugar Creek, you can see a curious thing:

What's wrong with this picture?!
Why would you have a shack in a location such as this?
So you can simply watch as cars zoom by?
Screengrab from the Googlemaps little highway man.

There's a rather fancy entrance shack upon which a lot of money was obviously spent, but no corresponding gates are present.  Rumor has it that gates WERE installed at one time, but were removed because someone sued the subdivision for barricading a public right-of-way.  It's not legal to do that, and so the gates had to be removed.

I haven't been able to verify for certain that this did, in fact, happen, but if I look at the anecdotal references on the internet, they unilaterally support this notion that only private streets can be gated. 

For instance, the City of Colleyville's municipal code discusses gating regulations at length, and while that content is strictly applicable only to that city, is is undoubtedly consistent with state law precedents.

Note the immediate distinction between public and private streets.
URL here. 

Similarly, guidance for subdivisions platted in County-controlled areas also makes reference to the issue of private property.  For example:

Excerpted from Hunt County, Texas subdivision guidance.
URL here. 

Well, heck, that's all well and fine, but what does League City itself say?!

League City's Code of Ordinances is maintained on the Municode platform.  Again, it's a lot of detail and less of the 30,000-foot view, but these passages are instructive:

Again we see the public-private distinction,
and Centerpointe's streets are public.

There is a large passage detailing the technical standards that apply to gates, but again, the emphasis is on the streets being private, not public.
URL here. 

So there you have what appear to be the facts of this matter: legally we couldn't install gates even if we wanted to.  But if a sufficient number of residents express a desire to investigate this issue further, by all means, get together and approach City Council in order to feel them out on the likelihood of the City's approving a request to vacate our streets, and by all means, derive some supportable estimates of the corresponding costs, and I'll publish them here for initial contemplation. 

UPDATE 2:12 pm:
Here are a few comments from the property management company on the subject of gates:

• Initial costs of up to $50,000 to install gates can be expected (not sure if that's per-entrance or per the three entrances).
• From that point forward, homeowners must pay the subdivision's electrical bills (streetlights) and all repairs to lights and streets (resulting in a signficant increase in annual property assessments). 
• Telephone lines would also have to be added to each gate and paid for monthly.
• Monthly maintenance on gates is expected to be $500 - $8,000 (they are very subject to damage from motorists) - again, these costs would be added to everyone's assessments. 
• Would require insurance policy rate increase - another monthly expense.
• Remote control devices are $20 - $35 apiece, paid for by homeowners. 
• Police would no longer patrol the subdivision or respond to calls regarding offenses such as automobile speeding, because the streets would be private property.

That last one kinda clinches it for me.  At this time I cannot foresee any net benefit to discontinuing police patrols in here.

Fence fantastic!

In a post about two weeks ago, I asked for fence stain recommendations.  I complained about current products on the market having potentially-reduced effectiveness due to recent reformulations required by air quality regulations. 

Well, thanks to a talented DIYer on Harvard Pointe, I was introduced to a product we can live with: Olympic Waterproof Toner.  I was surprised to see the cans for sale in the local Lowes as listing over 4 pounds per gallon volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which is very high (more than half the weight of the product).  VOCs are the air pollution culprits that have been phased out of architectural products, but those are the solvents that give stains their penetrating power.  For what it's worth, the claim was made that the VOCs used in this Olympic product were "non-photochemically reactive" (i.e., not smog-forming). 

The aesthetic impact of a good fence stain is simply amazing:

BEFORE: 
It's just blah,
with no contrast or definition to the landscaping.

BTW, if you want info on stock tank gardens,
there's a post here.

AFTER:
The fence is now an actual design element. 
We have an overwhelming 220 feet of cedar fence -
it HAS to look good!

This is the "Canyon Brown" shade,
which was also chosen by the Harvard Pointe resident.
There are lighter tones available if that's more to your taste.

This Olympic product is a bit more oily than I would personally prefer for a contact surface such as a deck.  But for a noncontact surface such as a fence, it seems to be acceptable - on initial application anyway.  We'll see how it weathers over time.

If you're interested in knowing the cost, it's about $150 for a 5-gallon bucket, which should be sufficient to do an entire perimeter fence. 

This stain can be rolled or sprayed, but spray is vastly preferable.  My thanks to Barry LaChance, owner of The Woodworks on East Walker Street, for advising me to get an airless sprayer.  I picked up a Graco TrueCoat for $199.  It was not difficult to achieve a uniform spray because (a) the sprayer was easy to use and (b) the stain had that high solvent content so that the uptake by the wood was good. 

Typically what we find is that if you DIY, even if you have to buy equipment, you still come out ahead financially over what you'd spend by hiring someone to do the job.  So here, we got 220 feet of fence stained for a total of about $350, but of course I'll use that sprayer again and again on future projects, so the effective cost was considerably lower than $350. 

Note what I said in my first post:  It is easy to get yourself into trouble with fence treatments.  If you pick the wrong product, you might end up with a mess either upon initial application or in the future as it weathers.  In my opinion, a good penetrating stain should allow the cedar to look like cedar (only better!) and then it should simply fade away over time, in the end leaving you with the typical weathered gray wood you started with.  I don't recommend coatings because they can vastly increase the costs and labor required for maintenance.  Previous neighbors of mine have gone through nightmarish scenarios where they had to either chemically treat their exterior wood to remove degraded coatings (major expense!!), or they had to simply wait until UV light from the sun broke down the coatings (and of course they had to live with the coatings peeling off and looking awful for several years!). 

Happy DIY-ing!!!
:-)

Fenced in

The community coordinator recently asked someone to recommend a good fence staining company.

As a consummate DIYer, I'm asking someone to recommend a good fence STAIN.

Once upon a time, I was the DIY Master of this stuff, inside and out.  I stained and sealed about 50% of the existing wood furniture in our house.  I re-stained all the kitchen cabinets prior to selling my last house.  I own my own pressure washer (a good one) and stained a tri-level outdoor deck and cedar fence at a previous home (pic below).  And refinished an oak hardwood floor at a graduate school apartment because my landlord did not have that kind of thing in his budget. 

Trouble is, blink and the world changes.  We recently found that out the hard way, after buying a new unfinished entertainment console from Bald Furniture in Webster.  "Piece of cake," I thought, as I custom-mixed our own stain color, as I always have done. 

But OMG, it was a horrible experience!! There has been such an incredible push in the past couple of years to lower the volatile organic compound (VOC) content of oil-based stains that many of the previously-wonderful products are now absolute garbage (VOCs can contribute to air pollution, but they are also what give oil-based stains their "teeth" or penetrating power as well as durability).  The stain we bought for the entertainment console, having insufficient reactives in its formulation, could not be made to penetrate the wood effectively.  To add insult to injury, the insufficiently-penetrated stain then lifted off when we applied clear top-coats, a cheapie effect I had never witnessed previously in my 20-odd years of intermittent experience.  Absolute garbage, in my opinion. 

About 10 years ago, I researched outdoor deck and fence stains extensively when I lived in central Texas, and I settled upon the brand name TWP (Total Wood Preservative, apparently now renamed "Total Wood Protectant", perhaps reflective of degraded performance??).

Here's a snippet of the old digs,
with the deck having been done by yours truly using Total Wood PRESERVATIVE "Cedartone"
and the rear fence in the contrasting "Dark Oak"
(see a little bit of it peeking out
from behind the grasscloth screen).

However, today when I review TWPs existing products, I see that their formulations also appear to have been changed to "low VOC", which means that I must begin this research all over again, because I will not trust that stuff.  (You can permanently mess up a fence or a deck if you use the wrong stain... it's not like you can simply scrape or sand it off). 

Anyway, are there any worthy products still left on the market?  As I implored above, if you know of a good oil-based penetrating wood stain (not a coating, not a 2-part epoxy), please comment or drop me a line via centerpointe.blog@gmail.com.  Thanks!!