blue wrote:

willshak wrote:

blue wrote:

snip

The fence is 17 cedar 1x6's per 8 ft section, with 2 2x4's on edge
at the back (one at top, one near bottom). There is a cedar 2x4
laying flat on top of the on edge 2x4 at the top. On the front of
the fence there will be a 1x4 cedar trim piece right underneath the
2x4 that is laying flat, and a 1x6 cedar trim piece at the bottom.
Since the space between our boards is minimal, and thus the chance
of seeing any greyed cedar is slim, and that the "uglier" (although
neither side of this fence is ugly) side of the fence will be facing
back alley and neighbours, is it necessary to stain the backside of
these trim boards?



Since the 'ugly' side is usually supposed to face the fence owner's
property, you would have to stain it
Facing the ugly side to your property may only be a courtesy in your
area, but it could be local code. You might want to check on that.


No code here for which side of fence faces where. The owner next door
lives in a different province and has rented out the house for the
last 10 years rents. The previous fence was rotten and falling over
(and the neighbour never payed for any of it). We asked him if he
would like to share the cost of the new fence and we would do all the
labour, he refused saying he doesn't care if there is a fence or not
since he is just renting the place out. Thus, ugly side goes to them.
Well and also because he had a shed a foot and a half on our property
on the side where there is 100' of fence, we asked politely for him to
move it since we didn't want to give up 150' of property to him by
placing the fence 1.5' onto our property. We offered to help move it,
gave him several months notice, he said he didn't want to put any
effort in since he just rented out the house. We ended spending a day
of our time getting the she moved nicely onto his property when we
could have spent that time building our fence.

Other neighbour is super nice guy, he offered to pay for half of the
fence on his side without us even asking but we told him not to worry
since there is less than 30' of fence between our houses. That side we
will be alternating sections, ugly side/good side.

Also, the fence design we made looks identical on either side with the
exception that one side has the rough side of the cedar fence boards
and you see 2x4's for trim instead of a 1x6 and 1x4. We intentionally
designed it this way so that if we had to alternate ugly side/good
side on both side, it would still look decent for us.

A code saying if you pay for an entire fence and put in all the
labour, yet have to have the good side to your neighbour seems absurd
to me. What would prompt a neighbour to ever pay for half? And what
would you do when both people pay for the fence?

That is moot where I live. There would be no reason to share the cost
since a fence cannot be placed directly on a property line. There is a
property line setback for a fence here. When I built my 6' high pool
fence some 17 years ago, the setback was 6 inches from the property line
(determined by survey). A couple of years ago, my neighbor across the
street put a fence up along his property line and the setback at that
time had been extended to 3' from the line.
My 17 year old cedar fence is falling apart and I want to replace the
cedar between the PT posts with new 6' vinyl fencing. I have to check
with my building code enforcement officer to see whether I can retain my
6" grandfathered setback status by retaining most, or moving some, of
the PT posts, or whether there is a percentage of replacement that would
nullify the grandfathered 6" setback and require me to move the whole
fence 3' from the line to come up to code.
Just to give you an example of the above mentioned 'percentage', there
is a code requirement here that if an addition is added to a house and
the sq ft of the addition is greater than the original house, the entire
building, including the original house, has to meet, or be brought up
to, code.
I don't agree with any of it, but that's the law here.


It is also important if your fence has a horizontal rail in the
middle of the pickets between posts. You don't want to give burglars,
or other neer-do-wells, a good foothold to climb the fence.


It doesn't.

Any advice on whether the back side of trim needs to be stained for
the benefit of the cedar?

If I ever put up a cedar, or any untreated wood fence again, I would
seal all surfaces, especially horizontal surfaces where snow and
rainwater lay. It's mostly my rails that are rotting away. I can't even
drive nails into the somewhat solid, but loose, pickets to secure them,
because it's like driving nails into styrofoam rails.


Not staining them would save me alot of time not having to wait for
that side to dry before we put them up. We could just put up the
trim and I could stain the fronts and edges right up on the fence.

If there is an advantage to staining the backsides, I definately
will. If it is a waste of my time, then I'd rather not. Any opinions?