This property in Los Angeles had the classic apartment-building side-yard setup — a tall CMU block wall separating the parking lane from the neighbor’s yard, with a makeshift wood fence top nailed on by someone a long time ago. The old boards were a mix of weathered planks of every color, bowing in places, and attached straight to the block with no proper framing. The owner wanted real privacy and a cleaner line, but didn’t want to throw out the boards that still had life in them.

The brief: reuse what’s good, replace what’s not

About half the old boards were still structurally sound — grey on the face but solid underneath, and worth salvaging for the look alone. The rest were split, bowed, or short. We pulled every board down, sorted them by condition and length, planed the faces smooth, and set aside what we could reuse. New boards were matched to the same width and feathered through the run so the finished fence looks intentionally mixed-tone rather than patched.

Proper framing over the CMU wall

The real problem with the old setup was structural: boards nailed directly to the top course of the CMU with concrete nails. That doesn’t hold in wind and tears the block up. We mounted heavy-duty metal post brackets to the top of the wall with concrete anchors, set vertical 4×4 posts into the brackets, then built a horizontal 2×4 frame across the posts. The reused and new boards attach to the frame — not to the wall — so wind load transfers into the posts and into the brackets, where it belongs.

Finish: no stain, keep the character

No stain. The whole point of mixing reused and new boards is that they tell the story on their own — the salvaged pieces hold their weathered warmth, the new pieces will silver-grey into the mix within a season. We let the wood breathe and age naturally. If the owner ever wants a uniform look, a wash of transparent stain over the whole fence pulls everything to the same tone.

Project summary

• Scope: fence top refresh over existing CMU block wall — salvage, reframe, rebuild
• Material: approximately half salvaged original boards, half new matched boards
• Structure: metal post brackets anchored to CMU, 4×4 posts, horizontal 2×4 frame
• Finish: raw wood, no stain — allowed to age naturally

Old board fence that’s past its prime but has usable material? Get in touch — we can salvage what’s worth saving and rebuild it correctly.