I have a pool in the back yard, and need to replace some fencing. The standard wood privacy fence isn't really private because as the pickets dry out, they shrink, and gaps develop between them, and you really don't have any privacy anymore.
One possible solution is to cover over the gaps with some kind of batten board, but the stuff I found at Home Despot is almost as expensive as the pickets. I need to check at a real lumber yard to see what's available in the way of thin, narrow cedar strips.
But it looks like the least expensive, and most effective, solution might be to overlap the pickets. So I would place the 3.5"-wide pickets 6" apart on centers, which would leave a 2.5" gap between them, and then nail another picket centered on the gap. I made a drawing and posted it here:
The overlap fence would have: (80x12)/6 = 160 pickets in the back row, plus an equal number in the front row, or 320 pickets in total, or 46 pickets more than standard. That's roughly $70 additional cost, which isn't all that much.
To match that cost, I'd have to find 6' batten strips for about 25 cents each, which I don't think is likely.
So whadayathink? Also, exactly how would I nail the front pickets on? I think the nails shouldn't go through the back pickets, but directly into the rail. But should I have a small block of wood in the gap to nail through?
Is there a better solution to this?