On Deck!

When I moved into this house 2 years ago, one of the home projects that I was definitely going to have done was replace the little tiny deck. It was literally 8x8 in size. If I had tried to place my square patio table and chairs on it, the table alone would have taken up all the floor space. And having the chairs on it along with the table? Forget that! That's how small the deck is.

This house was originally built as a model home 21 years ago. I'm thinking that the deck was added just to give potential home owners (at that time) an idea of what a deck would look like and to give access to the back yard. Well, here it is still standing, barely. The nails have been working their way back out of the floor, the steps began cracking lengthwise because of age and breaking under feet causing me to fall to the ground on one occasion!

Last year when the tornado came through my neighborhood, it was also the one thing that went untouched. If I had my choice on what did get destroyed by that tornado, it would have been the deck! But nooo.....it stood strong! Go figure!

So due to all the repairs I had to make from the tornado, the deck project was pushed to the back burner until this year. That day finally arrived!

After speaking to my next door neighbor Bob who has his own contracting company called Improvement Experts, we came up with a day to get the job done. Bob is the guy that rebuilt my fence and porch railing last summer after the tornado.

My neighbor Bob...the contractor, last summer during the rebuild of my fence after the tornado.

Here is a photo of the back of my house after the tornado last summer. My fence would normally have blocked this view. And if you can actually see it, you'll notice just how small the deck is!

This is the best photo I could find that shows how old the wood is. Here is Oreo sleeping in the sun amongst melting snow from last year mid March.

Monday of this past week, I spoke with Bob on the phone after I saw that lumber and decking material was on sale at various home improvement stores. He told me that this was a good week for him to get it done as he had a customer delay a job for him. So I was "on deck" for the job if you know what I mean! Thursday they would tear down the old one and begin building the new one on Friday. So I arranged for a dumpster to be brought to my house to collect the old wood and various other trash from the tear-down.

The dumpster on my driveway.

When I got home from work on Thursday afternoon, I saw that the guys were working on tearing down the old barely-standing pile of wood. I.E.-the deck. I walked around back and there it was....in a pile on the ground just waiting to be hauled around to the front of my house and thrown into the dumpster. The back of my house looked bigger in it's absence. Bob had ordered all the material that would be needed for the new deck so all I needed to do was go there to pay for it. The next day he would pick it all up and they would get started on it. Whoo hoo! I could hardly wait! I would finally be able to get the table and chairs and my grill out of my garage and put them in their proper places. And now I would finally be able to have my turn at the regular cook-outs that my friends and I usually do during the summer months. At least now they could be on my deck and I wouldn't have to worry about the whole thing falling down!!!

The spot where the old deck once stood.

Prepping for the new deck!

Friday isn't going to get here soon enough! I'm very excited to have a normal size deck with ample room for my things and people! Stay tuned!