A Cheap Dog Pen for Dummies

A temporary solution: no posts set in concrete!

Our staffers have been watching with interest as the renamed Demand Media Studios – now "Leaf Group" – has frantically shoved its eHow.com content into various niches. It makes sense that articles about home improvements have moved to HomeSteady and Hunker (the latter's apparently a riff on "hunker down"), but some of the choices are a little puzzling. Take "How to Make a Cheap Dog Pen," a post by Laurie Rappeport at Sapling.com. Sapling? about "growing your money"? It must be because of the word "cheap" in the title.

Whatever... But no matter where Leaf managed to niche it, Rappeport's copy would still qualify for the DotD award. If you track it back to the original at eHow before Leaf stripped off the list of "things you'll need," you'll find that Laurie seems to think you'll build that cheap pen with

• Wooden stakes (2 inches by 4 inches)
• Six wooden fence posts (2 inches wide)
• Chicken wire
• Chain link fencing

...along with a "hinge assembly" and "door hinges." Right away we were confused: WTF is a 2-by-4 "wooden stake"? Why would you need both chicken wire and chain-link fence, not to mention who thinks chain-link fencing is "cheap"? And WTF is a "hinge assembly"? With any luck, though, we'll figure it out from Rappeport's instructions, which are all that's left in the Sapling version. Some of the lowlights...

• "Dig holes that are about 2 feet deep (about 3 inches by 3 inches in diameter) for each corner..." – A) WTF does "3 inches by 3 inches in diameter" mean and B) how do you dig a 3-inch hole two feet deep? Rent an auger?
• "Pour cement into these holes. Mix the cement powder with water... Install the wooden fence posts into these corner holes while the cement is wet..." – A) it's not "cement powder" and B) it's a lot easier to put the posts in the holes first, Laurie!

• "Cut the chain link fencing to the appropriate length of each side of the dog pen, leaving an extra 6 to 8 inches to spare. Run each piece of chain-link fencing from post to post of the dog pen. Tie the chain link fence to the posts with fence ties and pliers by twisting the ends of the fencing together." – You're kidding, Right? Chain-link fence on 2-by-2 posts? No, Laurie, you use galvanized pipe for posts with chain-link fence! What you'll get for faking it is posts that snap under the weight of the fencing.
• "Screw two hinge assemblies to one gatepost of the dog pen. Measure the exact spot on the post where the hinges will hang, matching them to the hinge locations on the gate... Hang the gate onto the fence post hinges, sliding the hinges of the gate onto the hinge assembly mounted on the dog pen gatepost." – Clearly, written by someone who's never installed (or perhaps even seen) gate hinges.

As an aside, Rappeport never provides instructions for making a gate, and never mentions those "wooden stakes" again. For what it's worth, you can't buy chain-link fence in less than 50-foot rolls, meaning that you'd spend well over fifty bucks to build a crappy pen. For less than $40, you can get a folding wire pen that stores easily, is temporary so it doesn't make holes in your yard, and will actually last a lot longer than one built with the half-assed plans submitted by our Dumbass of the Day!

copyright © 2017-2021 scmrak

DDIY - PETS