Month: June 2008

Two days after the target completion date, our backyard contains a new deck. The project had its challenges, not the least of which was trying to get some work done while L was in the vicinity.

Here L is posing on the finished product. He’s already acquainted himself with the new deck by rolling down the stairs in front of the patio doors. The pigeons nesting on the neighbour’s house have also “christened” the deck–I need a paintball gun! And this morning, I was able to enjoy a nice cup of coffee in the morning sun. I’m a fan of the deck already.

PS. I’m also proud of it. I think it turned out quite well.

Determined to get something done yesterday, I worked through the rains … all five of them. It made things muddy. The mud in our backyard is sticky, so I spent most of the day with oversized and heavy boots. At the end of the day, when my back was talking to me loudly enough for me to listen to it, I had the beams for the deck completed.

This morning, I was out there early, hoping to get in a few hours before the rain. After outlasting another short downpour, I managed to get the deck ready for the floor.

Last year, when I tackled the fence in our backyard, the thing that got the whole project going in the first place was the deck. It was unsafe, a liability lawsuit waiting to happen.

As things went, I ran out of time before I got to the deck itself. However, I’m now happy to say that the eyesore in our backyard which passed for a deck (at some earlier point in its career) has been removed. Yesterday, I took the good old wrecking bar and sledgehammer to it. Its parts are now a pile of (mostly) rotten, nail-filled pieces of wood at the landfill.

I thoroughly enjoyed destroying the deck. Maybe it’s a guy thing. There’s just something exhilarating about swinging a sledgehammer with all the force you can muster and seeing the splintered wood fly.

While demolishing the deck, I had a chance to “admire” the handiwork of the person who built the deck. What a mess! He also didn’t spend a whole lot on materials; he must have found a deal on railway ties and decided to build a deck using nothing but the railway ties and some recycled four-by-fours and two-by-fours.

He even made good use of the existing vegetation in his backyard. During the demolition, I discovered what appeared to be a tree stump functioning as a support for the deck floor. Here I’m resting one of the last railway ties on the stump while I get ready to muscle it onto the truck.

Today, Pam and I set the foundation for the new deck.