VINYL: Hollow pickets attach to or go through rails for a lightweight fence that never needs painting. The stock white color looks good as is-or it can be coated with an exterior paint. They can be stained any color, will need periodic re-coating, and come in a variety of shapes.ĬELLULAR PVC: This rot-resistant plastic looks like painted wood from a distance and can be milled to nearly any shape. WOOD: A favorite choice, wood pickets are available in everything from budget-friendly pressure-treated pine to redwood. Wood is warm, but man-made is nearly maintenance-free. Pick a Material Photo by Gary Conner/Getty Images Shown: The postwar Cape Cod helped make the white picket fence an American staple. When the Colonial Revival style arrived in the early 20th century, white came back into vogue on new suburban homes-and pickets became an icon. Then, in the mid-1840s, Victorian homeowners, with access to a broader range of paint colors, began coating fences in park-bench green or brown to blend in with the landscape. In early America, affluent colonists preserved their fences with creamy-white paint or whitewash, a mixture of lime and water, to match the home's trim color, which through the Greek Revival period usually meant white.
For fences enclosing a pool, code requires a minimum height of 4 feet. How tall should they be? A fence 3 to 4 feet tall makes for a nice barrier from the street. Gates should be checked annually and adjusted to keep them plumb in the opening. How much maintenance? Two coats of a solid-color stain should last 5 to 10 years.
Vinyl or aluminum versions cost $5 to $12.60.Īre they DIY-friendly? A skilled homeowner can install a fence on a flat lawn, but hire a pro to handle the job on sloped turf. What do they cost? Depending on style and species, 3½-foot-tall panels of wood pickets run $3.40 to $50 per linear foot, not including installation. Styles vary, but all picket fences use the same basic parts to enclose a yard.
Anatomy of a Picket Fence Illustration by Cynthia Ng Shown: a row of white pickets marks the front yard's boundary while allowing views from the street and the porch. But if it's a custom look you're after, wood still offers the greatest number of picket shapes and styles, and it can be stained any color.įrom shopping advice to design inspiration, here's what you need to land the perfect picket fence. There are a growing number of low-maintenance options like vinyl, cellular PVC, metal, and composites. When you start looking for a picket fence, you'll find that wood isn't the only choice. Both were, and still are, homeowner favorites, and for good reason: They come in enough different styles to suit any house, from formal to casual. So what's a picket? That would be a 1½-inch squared stake with a pointed or round top that became popular during the Greek Revival period. What you and I know as the picket is actually a paling-a flat board with a decorative or squared top that gets face-nailed to horizontal rails between posts.
Then, as they are wont to do, the carpenters came along and, armed with pattern books, started introducing new details to the wood parts. Like so many old-house details, the picket fence has roots planted squarely in utility: Colonists built them to keep chickens in the yard and to protect the garden.
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