It was worth the drive!

As most of y'all know, we have been slowly working on our house for the past 4 years.  We built it from the ground up, and did most of the finish work ourselves (with friends and family).  Many, many things remain unfinished.  Mostly due to lack of funds, but a lot of it has to do with our overall "Slacker-ness".  Like I've said before, when a Slacker Mama marries a Slacker Daddy, things tend to remain unfinished.

We are very close to having the majority of the "bones" finished in the interior, but have tons of things left to do on the exterior.  One of the biggest things we have left to do (other than actual landscaping) is the deck on the back of the house.

The back of our house has a teeny-tiny porch, that was originally supposed to be screened-in.  But, while we were gone on vacation, our builder pushed our fireplace wall out into the porch area.  He wanted to make our living room larger, but destroyed most of any usable space we had on the already small back porch.  Because of that, we decided not to screen it in.  We do have our grill and a couple of chairs out there, but that's all the room we have.

 

Sorry for the untidiness. It's not time for Spring cleaning yet.  HAHA!

So, when it comes to our outdoor space, we are limited to our front porch (which we love), but we just don't have the privacy that we would have in the back.  We have wanted to put the back deck on forever, but we just haven't had the additional funds to do it with.

Home ownership is expensive, y'all!  LOL

We also have a safety issue with our lack of a deck.

You see that door over there?  It really needs to open out onto something other than dirt!  (BTW, that door is NEVER used currently, so no risk of injury)

 

Our proposed deck will go from the corner of the house (to the right of the door, in the picture, or to the left  as you are walking out of the door) to the edge of that big silver pile.  It will be one big rectangle.  The total deck will measure 16 feet x 32 feet.

That's a whole lotta deck!  And a whole lotta deck costs a whole lotta money!

This year we decided to try our best to use our (small) income tax refund, along with some other funds to start the deck.  We have been crunching numbers trying to figure out how to make the money stretch as far as we can, but have been unsure if we can actually get it done.

Well, on Friday night, Marty was looking on Craigslist and found material for the deck joists (the most expensive part) for two-thirds less than what we can find in our local stores. 

 **JACKPOT!**

The only problem, it was 100 miles away, in another state!

We woke up early Saturday morning, called the store, and they still had the wood.  We decided at the last minute to go for it, and head out for our unplanned journey.  There was a mad rush of trying to get a trailer at the last minute, getting the directions to print out, and getting everyone ready and out the door, but we managed to get everything done quickly.

The ride there was calm and uneventful.  The weather was beautiful and the conversation was great!  We found the place with no issues, and purchased 100 pieces of  2' x 12' x 10' lumber.

Now comes the fun part...getting 3000 pounds of lumber home, without incident.

Fortunately, my SUV is rated for way more than that, as was our trailer, but driving with that much weight is an experience in itself.  Our 1 1/2 hour journey there, ended up as a 3 1/2 hour journey home.  Thank goodness we had no problems, but I didn't breath easy until we pulled into our own yard!

Just look at all that beautiful wood!

 

Jameson helping his daddy unload the wood.

 

We left the house around 7:30 am and the last piece of wood was unloaded around 6:00 pm.  It took all day long, but we ended up saving $999.50 on the wood by doing it this way.

I would say, it was definitely worth the drive!

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Now I am taking bets on when the deck will actually be finished.  Anybody care to make a guess?