Board on Board,the Privacy Style With No Gaps

A board-on-board fence uses two rows of pickets fastened to the same rails, offset so each board in the front row covers the gap between two boards in the back row. Instead of a single line of boards edge to edge, the fence line is built in a slight overlap, one to two inches on each side of a picket, so there is no straight-through sightline anywhere along the run, even as the wood shrinks and moves with the seasons. The construction has more than one name depending on where you're from: some contractors and homeowners call the same alternating-board build a shadow box fence, it's the same fence either way.

Two rails are not enough to carry the weight of two overlapping rows of pickets. A board-on-board line needs a top, middle, and bottom rail, and the same rule applies here as everywhere else on a wood fence: your posts decide the outcome more than the boards do. Pickets on posts measured and set right for the ground they are actually in will hold that overlap true for years. Pickets on posts that were not will not, regardless of the style built on top of them. A board-on-board line is only as good as that post work, whatever style name someone used to ask for it.