Last week we told you about our sad deck and plans to rehab it back to life. Exhibit 1: Sad deck.
Saturday morning, we had an unexpected surprise: Ryan’s dad showed up with a load of decking boards! (We were anticipating picking them up ourselves, but this was a way better surprise!) But before we could start laying the new wood, we had to finish phase one, DECONSTRUCTION. Imagine me saying that like an emcee at a monster truck show.
Last weekend we knocked out all the balusters. This weekend, we took out the rest of the wood we planned to replace.
We even bought a crowbar for the occasion. Thank goodness for that crowbar and all the wonderful leverage it provided.
We alternated jobs: Ryan would pry out a board, I’d flip it over and hammer down the nails and use the miter saw to make smaller, manageable pieces. Then we’d switch when the prying person got tired.
It all went pretty smoothly. Most of the wood was easy to get up. Others boards split right in half. We uncovered two joist boards that were in dire need of replacing, notably this exterior board. We weren’t planning on taking the steps out, but this board needed to go. More board removal would reveal it was soft and splintered. Nice.
If you follow us on Instagram, you probably saw this progress photo. It was quite a workout – we started around noon and went full steam until around four.
Rain clouds drove us inside, but we finished what we set out to accomplish with the deck. The old boards are piled up (still need to cut a few to smaller pieces), the steps are off and the new boards are hanging out, waiting to be laid.
But the bad news? Umm. Yeah. There’s a lot of rain in the forecast this week. Allegedly, the chance of rain on the Fourth is 30%, so we might get lucky. But you know how unpredictable summer weather is.
I guess we can use this rainy downtime to pick out railing? Just kidding, totally gonna binge on Game of Thrones instead.
What are you doing for this week’s holiday? Staying home? Going on vacation? Do tell, so we can live through your adventures as we eat ice cream from the carton and root against the Lannisters.
