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. . .