Deck Complete!
Finally, the deck is finished! Woohoo! Let the outdoor living begin!
Let me remind you again of what it looked like before…
And now…
This space saucer thing…
Is a fire pit!
View from the ground –
A Farewell to Deck
When we bought our house we loooved the deck! It was definitely one of, if not THE, nicest decks in the neighborhood. It was Trex (or so we thought) which is so nice for bare feet and no maintenance, too. Oh yeah!
I particularly liked the two levels, it was like a dining room and a separate living room.
But before our first summer was over we noticed some cracking and bowing of the planks. Over the winter there was a visible difference in the size of the planks versus the size of the planks during the summer. We actually covered one of the broken planks with an inverted flower pot to keep the kids from tripping. Classy!
Well, it didn’t take long before we realized that our lovely deck needed to be repaired. While we got estimates and proposals we slowly pieced together the whole story.
The deck was not original to the house. The builder used a recycled, plastic planking that was inappropriate to the weather conditions in Colorado. The deck was replaced once, never paid for and the builder went out of business. The deck never had a final inspection and would actually not have passed if it had.
We moved from repair to replace rather rapidly. (Ogle that awesome alliteration!)
Work started on the new deck last week. When I went to take some “before” pictures, I could feel the steps leading from one level to the next sagging as I walked on them. Yikes!
Goodbye old deck!
(you can tell how bleached out the planks were – in the corner there used to be built-in benches)
Hello fancy, steel frame!
Giant Hole of Nothingness
So that’s the big news around here – we’re getting a fancy pants new deck. Every morning at 6:58, I hear car doors slam outside my house. At precisely 7:00, the hammers start hamming and the saws start sawing. There is work being done on the front porch, too, which involves cement drilling. You know all our neighbors are loving us about now.
More pictures to come later as the deck progresses…
B is for…
Bookshelves!
My photography isn’t getting any better yet. Though this picture was taken on one of my camera’s manual settings, instead of automatic, so at least I’m learning. And today was an overcast day so the lighting was bad.
We had these bookshelves built in our music room over the summer. They are a cluttered, jumbled mess right now for two reasons. First, because I really need some good bookends that will hold up a big line of heavy books. And second, they are holding refugee knickknacks from two other bookshelves that got moved from the living room into our master bedroom. Once I get those two situations remedied, they’ll be neat and tidy.
But aren’t they nice anyway? (click on the picture to see it larger – it’s much better that way) The music room is the first room you can see when you enter our house, so I wanted something with a lot of impact. They are nice and deep – I showed the builder my ginormous Sonlight binder and told him I needed shelves deep enough to fit it. The shelves are also really tall – 8 feet, if I remember correctly. Which is particularly funny when you know I’m only 5 feet tall. And I can reach, what do you think – about another foot over my head? So that leaves a good 2 feet of shelves I can’t reach. Gonna have to get a taller stool. Or a library ladder.
If you have a “B” photo, leave me a comment in this post with a link to your picture. Flikr, Photobucket, another photosharing site or your own blog…whatever you’ve got. If you missed the last letter, just jump right in anyway!
Out With the Old
…
In with the new…
When we first moved in we knew that the side-by-side refrigerator that came with the house was going to be too small. It wasn’t a pressing issue, but we did research and figured out which fridge we wanted when the time came. Then Thanksgiving week we found an ad from Home Depot and we were able to save $700 on a new fridge! We’re loving the extra room, especially in the freezer. There was a brief moment of panic when I realized that we forgot to measure the space between the kitchen island and the counter. I made Philip get up (we were already in bed) and come with me to confirm that the new fridge would actually be able to be maneuvered in. No worries, it had a couple of inches to spare.
The rest of the appliances in the kitchen are black, but we decided to go with the stainless for the fridge. I’m glad we did, since we’ll be getting a gas range in the next few years and so will slowly go completely stainless.