Sometimes You Have to Stay Home

Some weekends, we just need to stay home. Even though the Harley sat in the garage calling out to us, we devoted the last couple of days to a little (well, maybe not so little!) home improvement project.

Our deck was in need of serious help. Even though it's not that old, it was apparent that the upkeep (that should have been kept!) was going to become more intense every year. "Deck?" you say. "Aren't they supposed to be working on the kitchen? What's up with that?" Yes, the kitchen is still in the works. The cabinets are stacking up in a corner of the basement. But we knew that if we were going to work on the deck, we need to take adavantage of some of the cool, pleasant spring weather we've been having.

Here's a couple of before photos. The wooden balusters have been removed and stacked on the wavy, blotchy deck flooring.

Here's the master carpenter at work. We are using a composite decking material from Weatherbest. It could have been screwed down to the original floor joists, but D chose to use his biscuit jointer to make slots for these special fastening clips. They draw the floor boards together and to the joists without the look of dozens of screw holes across the floor. As each old deck board was removed, my job was to remove the nails and stack under the deck. Hopefully, we can find someone to give them a new home.

After two days of un-accustomed physical labor, we had the floor replaced. On the second day, he actually trusted me with the screw gun and allowed me to do more than remove nails and be "gofer". We've still got lots of work to do but we did accomplish a lot today! The new posts are in place but I've got to find more of the cute little lights before we can finish up the railing. You can barely make out the light on the second post from the left. I forgot to take a final photo of the day until right before I sat down to blog! It's pretty dark out there right now. We'll also enclose underneath the deck and replace the stairs. D might be a little stiff and sore tomorrow after using some muscles he'd forgotten about. But he's not forgotten his construction heritage or skills. He probably wouldn't admit it, but I think he actually enjoyed this stage of the project. There's still a lot to do though, and hopefully it won't take us all summer. After all, there's still the kitchen!