Michael & Liz are Bloggable

I finished the deck this weekend... and the reason I say kinda is because I still have a few things left to do but I don't feel like waiting for those things to post this message. I still have to to put caps on the top of the posts, then power wash and stain the deck, and also install some reinforcing wood underneath the deck between the joists. But all those things won't happen for a little while because it's getting cold and it'll have to be put into the budget. Also a task for next summer is to install lattice below the deck and plant bushes around it. This will upset the dogs because they love running under the deck... but they can deal.

Here is a picture of what the deck looked like before (you're supposed to say "eewww ugly ewwww"). The paint was chipping, the railing was rotting, and you can't see it from this far away but the balusters weren't spaced evenly or leveled. And yes those are concrete stones in the yard, I have no idea what the previous owner was thinking. Needless to say the concrete is gone.



So here is a time line of the deck after the point where I flipped the floor boards (or replaced some floor boards) and started installing the railings:

Then the connectors or whatever they are called. I have not touched the stairs yet because that is the hardest part and I didn't feel like dealing with it yet:

I look like a bum, but at least I'm a tired bum:

Here's a zoom in of the sweetness:

Balusters in:

If you guessed the tennis racket you were right. There are two wasps nests around our house that I have been battling with. One day while working on the deck, and this is no exaggeration, I sent 11 wasps tumbling to their death in the yard... in fact I was 12 for 12 on swings (one wasp got the racket twice). I'm glad I was perfect on swings because otherwise I'm sure it would have been a lot more difficult of a match each time. Liz wasn't really enjoying hearing about the body count either... "HUN, THAT'S 7 WASPS TODAY! Can you believe that?!?!"... "yeah... great."

Not much of a transition here... here the posts and connectors are installed already, there is still one more post to go though in the middle of the stairs:


"dawdy, we cawn't sees any mawrs."


And... done... the difference between the last deck picture and this one is the middle post on the stairs, the balusters on the stairs, and the hand railing all the way around the deck. Check out the master piece:


Ta da!

Overall I am very pleased with the work and at the beginning I was very nervous about the stability of the railing but it turns out it's really solid. The only thing easy about it is once I figured out how to do something... it was monotonous to do it 87 times... like balusters. The hardest part? There's a slew of hardness about this project:

• Fitting the hand railings and connectors into and around the posts was difficult. They were very tricky cuts to make.
  
• The stairs was difficult because of all the angle cuts involved. I have no miter saw so you can imagine the difficulty in that.
  
• Measurements never work out... No matter how many times you measure, you're inevitably off by a small space here or there you'll notice it forever.
  

I am super excited to have our deck back and not have wood sitting on it. Hopefully we can enjoy the deck for years to come and it holds up to the test of time.