The Historic District

folks on this site never cease to amaze me with their willingness to do the research and follow through...what a delight to see your labor of love compliment your home...warren may spell words incorrectly, but I am very fond of the color (ca-lah with a boston accent!)...

...jade

Looks great. What primer did you use?

Hey everyone - thanks for the nice comments. Flattery is pretty exciting !

mattswabb - I used the hardware store brand red oxide alkyd primer for metal. It is Beautitone Paint - distributed by Home Hardware in Canada. I guess that it would be similar to Tremclad - do you have that in the USA ?

awesome, awesome, awesome... nice job and I love the color matching

Can't go wrong with red oxide; but always check what the recommendation is for the rust-stop product. My rust-inhibitor wants an acylic latex primer.
Casey

Your fence looks awesome, nice job! Well worth all the hours.

I'm really surprised by the amount of feedback you got from your neighbors. Comments like that just don't seem to happen in our neighborhood. Maybe that has to do with the preservation mindset of a neighborhood? In my area, slapping up vinyl and tearing out history is strongly encouraged. I've heard very little feedback in general, but when I do, they are usually asking why I don't just replace something with a newer "better" version.

Hi Mkeller234.

My neighbourhood is pretty neighbourly - at least with the neighbours who get along with each other. It also has a Beer Store (yes, that is what it is called, they are a provincially regulated chain that sells only beer and cider) at the end of the street. This area has a large amount of foot traffic between residents doing their errands like grocery shopping, and many bottle and can pickers going to and from the Beer Store.

I had a wide range of input from a spectrum of people. I had drunk guys telling me that I should pay them to paint my fence (nope), my elderly neighbour standing over me poking the fresh drying paint with her cane to point out a spot I had missed, a complete stranger rushing over as I was applying the paint color to gasp "Why are you painting your fence ?!", and an area creep who has never been observed painting anything coming over to tell me that he was an expert in painting fences "like these" and that I should use a roller (mmm-hmmm). I was sitting on a milk crate on the sidewalk, so I could not avoid the interaction. There were also lots of dudes riding by on bicycles who would call out things like "You're doing a great job !" as they rode past. Women tended to give a quick compliment as they walked past, drunk dudes seemed to want to share the most technical advice/painting resumes.

Sombreull - I had never used Ospho before. This product is hard to get in Canada and only available from a small distributor for automotive purposes. I did lots of research on car forums (these seemed to be the major users who talked the most). It sounded like there were were potentially some chemical compatibility issues between previously Ospho'd surfaces and epoxy paints, or surfaces that had not been washed thoroughly after the 24 hour application sitting time. I am leery of using even the most modern latex paints on surfaces that had been previously painted with an oil enamel, particularly as I was painting over sections of aluminum paint = alkyd primer and paint.

Oh, I love the fence details and agree that it looks fantastic in the creamy color!
Diane

That really, really looks nice. Although black would have been correct, the color of your house lends credence to the paint scheme. Very nice.

My fondest memory of growing up in a row house was when my father found out that our neighbor bragged about how she would let the houses on either side help her keep her fuel costs down. Every winter my father would feel one wall and then feel the wall on her side and start cursing in Italian...

I have used Ospho in the restoration of old cars.

Nicholas wrote: Although black would have been correct,

Black was by far the most common, but not only color used on fencing. I'm not sure this color scheme is not "historically correct"