I'm just saying that 4' or 5' of wood gate is not going to be much different in cost than 4' or 5' of wood fence of the same height. But like anything else, you can make it cost more by adding luxury and details. The pictures are revealing. In most photos we see of the house front, we can expect that, located behind the photographer, is the public street. You surprise us with a grand view of a wooded valley instead. A fence is a separating device and there's little logic to separating your front porch from its outlying view. (Things that go against logic almost always do not look good.) Where it might make sense to put in a picket fence is to separate the automotive entrance area (which is the more public area) from the front yard. You already have the logical entrance to the front yard, the arbor, in place, so it would be easy to connect a run of fence to each side of it. Oddly, with all the pictures you took, you don't have one that shows the approach to the house such as one would see driving up to it. (If you add any more, it's better to pick out the pictures that show well what's needed and post them directly into the thread.) It's likely that a fence would be better running through the garden area than being at the edge of the concrete drive. Exactly how, could not be explained easily without better (wide view) photos of that area. Congratulations on having steps that are of a width appropriate for the house. One would more typically see a set of steps 3' wide! Instead, yours look to be about 10'. On the other hand, I wish all of the raw wood were painted. It would be so much more charming if it looked finished.

This is a little off-topic, I guess, but a memory, and some thought, prompted by this and other threads on fencing and coordinating with neighbors' fencing, etc. When I was a child, there were hardly any fences at all in our suburban neighborhood. Oh, we had a privet hedge along the back, and some people had tree/shrub/perennial beds that formed a sort of boundary, but there were always paths through and we kids would range freely from yard to yard throughout the entire neighborhood, playing tag, hide and seek, sardines, whatever. Even the elderly people (well, they seemed so at the time, but maybe wouldn't now, lol) whose children had grown and moved out, welcomed us into their yards and even onto their porches (one house had really cool curved brick steps and another had two white wrought iron benches in the front portico ... need I enumerate what those can be in a child's imagination?) as long as we respected their property. Oh, I'll admit, I have a fence. There was one here when we moved in 30 years ago. When it came time to replace it and we took it down, I looked out at the openness and wondered if I really wanted to put up a new one ... but, having little children, a dog, and neighbors' fences on the opposite side and rear ... ah, well, go with the flow. The "kids" are big now, and the dog is walked (not just let out), but now we have a koi pond and code requires that it be fenced. Ah, well ... at least fences can be nice backdrops for our gardens, provide something for vines to scramble on, roses and such to spill over, and nepeta, iris and daisies to peek through.

Hi Jamie THis past summer I built my own picket fences but I didn't use pallets. I used wooden lathes that I was also able to get for free from Home Depot. My fences are really border fences around various flower beds not full size picket fences. The best advice I can offer is to measure the area several times before you start putting it all together. I laid my pieces all out where I was going to put them before I actually started putting everything together. Once I had it all lined up the way I wanted it I marked everything so that when I started putting it all together there wouldn't be any guesswork. This spring I will be building a picket fence to go down the side of our front yard between my neighbors house and ours for more flower beds. I wish you the very best of luck. Penny

Constant vigilance via a hoe, flamer, or herbicide application.