One day you’re saying a new deck can wait. The next day, you’re working out a drawing with the contractor and watching the old deck come down.
The old back deck had to be at least 30 years old. At one time, it was stained with a reddish colour. So was part of the brickwork on the house because the previous owners were careless, but I digress. A couple of years ago, my husband and my brother took off a strange corner and shored up some of the loose parts, just to buy us some time. But the wood was so worn and gross that it needed something. It wouldn’t take any more stain so I slathered some ugly, grey floor paint on it. As you probably know, paint is truly a last resort in these cases, and I just used grey because it’s what I had on hand.
It lasted a couple more years but the ugly paint really started to peel this spring.
Long story short, we decided it was time. In short order, the guys reduced the deck to this.
The chipmunk that was once in our basement, the only tenant under the deck, returned while we were standing around admiring the wreckage and sniffed at the area that used to be his home. As if to shrug and say, well, I guess I’m moving, he ran off and hid under some good lumber piled between two sheds.
The deck we’ve designed – Derek, me, Axel the contractor and our nephew Jordan, Axel’s good friend – will be bigger and have a special space for me to enjoy the outdoors while not having to sit under nature’s great flashlight. In other words, a covered spot because I don’t like direct sunlight. Materials have arrived. Posts are in. Let the outdoor oasis begin!