To fence or not to fence.

Actually, that's not even the question. Of course we will fence; we're about to have a kid who will inevitably want to run around outside at some point, and the five-strand barbed wire fence that separates our yard from the prairie is surely inappropriate at best. Plus, it sure would be nice to have a place to chuck the dog in the early morning hours when he wants to go out and I'm just not ready to give up my warm bed.

But what to fence with? And how to do it? Those are the questions we're dealing with. On one side, we have a neighbor whose yard was fenced before we moved in. They used the most popular fencing material in our neighborhood, white vinyl, easily purchased at Lowe's or Home Depot and relatively inexpensive. Now, our neighbors on the other side are planning to start their own fencing project, and they wish to use stained cedar, which definitely looks a lot classier than the vinyl fencing does. So we're going to be mismatched either way we go.

I see a real benefit to the vinyl fencing. It is inexpensive and low maintenance. It is also probably a little easier to install than the wood fence. But the wood fence really does look nice. So we have a decision to make. At some point. Heck, the little munchkin won't be running around for over a year, so we have time.

The other problem is, how to fence? Ideally, I would like to fence as far forward on both sides of the house as possible, all the way up to the front corners of the house. That would give us maximum yard space, which we really need because our back yard is extremely small. On the "wood" side of the house, that won't be a problem, although the front corner of our house is much farther forward than that of our neighbors' house. It probably means we'd have to add on to the front of their fence to extend it as far forward as we can. But all we have on that side of the house is the side of the garage with the rear garage door, and one single basement egress window. As long as that garage door and the egress window are behind the fence, they are somewhat protected.

The other side, "vinyl", is the problem. Our neighbor on that side lives on a plot that is just the beginning of a cul-de-sac part of our street. This means their plot is at maybe a bit of an angle to ours. Their house sits at an odd angle on the lot, as well, so the side of their house does not run exactly parallel to ours. They fenced from the back corner of their house on that side, and the back corner is not as far forward on the lot as ours is. So if we just came off their post, our fence would run at an angle to get to the back corner of ours. It would look strange. Not to mention that it would do nothing to maximize our meager yard. But if we were to fence forward of their fence, we run into another problem. I suspect that the property line is not what is delineated by where the neighbor has built a decorative wall (part of their lot is a little higher than ours). I think the property line probably veers away a bit from that little wall, some of the grass we mow as "ours" is actually on their property. So how weird is it going to look if we fence along the property line, and will someone be able to fit a mower or weedwhacker in there to take care of the grass?

We'll just have to see. The fence isn't high priority until the spud starts walking. Although I'm sure the dog would like it...