The Deck: Part Three

While Dan left to drop off the rental truck, I stayed at the house and began the destruction.  First, I cleared the deck and moved the grill into the kitchen.

 A few strong pulls and the railings came down. One of them . . . onto my leg. At the time, it didn't hurt so bad.

But the next day showed a different story . . .

I should have known . . . 15 minutes into this project and I'd already damaged myself.

The Deck: Part Two

6:30 am - My alarm sounds and I begrudgingly open an eye. We have to be at Home Depot at 7am to return the wood we have on "will call", rent a truck, pick out new boards, and bring them home.

7:00 am  - We grab a cart for the wood (this in itself seems to be a feat to track down this morning) and head to the decking section to get the 2"x8"x16' pressure treated boards. As it turns out they are stacked up higher than I can reach. I ask a (very helpful!) employee to help Dan while I head to the service counter to return the wood on "will call" and rent the truck.

8:00 am - We start loading the 16' boards on the truck. This is way more work than it looks. It takes us 30 min to get them in there and the door closed.  On a scale of 1-10, my crankiness is at a 5 now.

8:30 am  - I get the keys to the truck. When I get back outside Dan has an odd (yet gleeful) look on his face.

Me: what?

Dan: I have something to show you?

Me: Um, what? 

Dan: Come here . . .

We start walking over to the pallet of concrete blocks as he points between them. I crouch down to see this:

Do you see that little kitten face? We tried to catch it for awhile, but it was too hard to get to.

9:00 am: We head to the house to drop off the boards.

9:45 am: Back at HD to get the other boards we need to the railings etc. When you're at home making the list, 30 - 1"x6"x8', 12 - 2"x4"x12', 32 ballusters, and 6 - 4"x4"x10' boards don't seem like much. But, when you start loading them up . . . you realize how much that is.

By the time it took to load the wood, drive to the house, and unload the wood - it was close to 11am. We hadn't even done anything yet.

to be continued. . .

The Deck: Part One

While the main structure of our deck is perfectly fine, the twenty year old floor boards and rickety railings had to go. I've been talking about this project for awhile. Years. We tackled the fence and stairs in 2008. Three years later it's time to do the deck boards.

Here are some before pictures:

You can see from that last picture that the railing was incredibly sturdy.  Moving the grill was a piece of cake. I wheeled it inside and it took about 45 seconds - it was a one (wo)man job.

On Friday night we picked up our zipcar to head to Home Depot to get the boards for the deck.  We spent about 30 minutes picking out the boards and loading them up before realizing there was no way we would be able to tie them onto the roof  of our rental SUV as expected.  So we pushed them up to the service counter to get some insight to what our options were.  It turned out renting a Home Depot pick-up was the best route for us.  So, we left the wood at "will call" and vowed to return at 7am the next morning to pick it up.

While we were picking out the deck boards Dan had questioned the thickness (they were 5/4). I insisted they were the right size. Until we got home and realized the boards we had on the deck were 2" (really 1.5") boards and I had to eat crow. Which meant all the wood we had laboriously picked out (and was waiting for us) was wrong.

So, wrong wood, wrong car. Not a good way to start a project. At this point, I started to think we were over our heads.

to be continued. . .

On the agenda. . .

This weekend we are hoping to finally re-do the deck, which entails ripping up and replacing the floor boards and building new railings. The one thing I am dreading is carrying our huge 160 lb. grill down the stairs - though I suppose we may be able to wheel it inside the house for the day. But, it will be worth it once I get to smash all the gross and broken deck railings off.

Then, back to more painting. . .

Things are happening

After another weekend of painting, we finally finished the living room, stairway and upstairs hall. We have never been so thankful for the ladder we bought a few months ago!

With the heat wave we are enduring (weather.com tells me it "feels like" 104 degrees right now), I can't imagine getting to all the outdoor projects we have on the list. But, the weekend looks great and I'm hopefully we get to tackle the deck!

Stay tuned . . .