Half-way there!

Marty worked like crazy over the weekend and has the deck half-way finished! 

The first board is in!

Testing out his handy work!

He just has to make it to the door!  LOL

 Smoooooth

He decided he wanted to use brackets and screws to attach the boards from underneath, instead of screwing it down through the top.  This is taking a TON more time (and money), but the top is smooth as a baby's behind (except for the wood's natural imperfections).

It looks like it will be finished in time for the graduation party!

I can't wait!

The frame is finished!

Thanks to some help from a great friend, (THANK YOU CLAY!!!) the deck frame is officially finished!  We are ready to start putting on the deck boards!

It looks like we are right on schedule to have it finished before the graduation party!

I told Marty, instead of putting down deck boards, we might as well put down plywood and get ready to start framing it for a new room since it's built like the rest of the house!  HAHA!

Hey, at least we have options for the future!

I hope you all have a fantastic week!

WOW! This deck is going to be huge!

Marty spent most of the weekend working on the deck, again.  He was hoping to get everything ready for framing, finished this weekend, but he just ran out of time. I mean, there are only 24 hours in a day, right?  He may not be finished, but he's really got a ton accomplished, especially since he is doing it all on his own.

 

Here is the state of the deck Sunday evening:

 

 

This section is ready for the decking material!  He's finished the framing, and has even treated everything with water seal!

He still has a solid day's work ahead of him to finish the framing, but it's light years away from what were were a month ago!  I am so proud of him for sticking to it and getting it done!

Since most of the framing is done, we can really see how large the deck is going to be.  We knew the dimensions were going to be 16' x 32', but until you actually see it, you don't realize how big that really is!  We are going to have a lot of room for entertaining!

We aren't planning on adding rails because we want to have steps that go all the way around the deck, like this:

From Decks.com

 Ideally, this is what we eventually hope to do:

From Decks.com

But the steps and pergola will have to wait until next year!

At least we will have tons of space for Chelsea's graduation party....which is now less than 6 weeks away!

Thank you all for taking this journey with us!

I hope you all have a fantastic week!!

Deck progress!

Marty has been spending every extra second working on the deck.  He's determined to get it finished before Chelsea's graduation party in May.  BUT, he is stubborn and refuses to ask anyone for help.  It's taking a lot of time, but he's getting it done.  Here's how it looks so far:

This was right after Marty took the last two rows of vinyl siding off the house.  Talk about being FREAKED OUT!  I can't stand one inch of the outside not being covered.  HaHa!

 

The first two support boards going up!  (PLEASE excuse the nastiness of the back of our house!  The back parts facing the back yard get ZERO direct sunlight and tend to get moldy. We will get everything pressure washed once the deck is done.)

 

Don't mind the cow standing on the back porch.

 

The third wall of support boards going in!

He still has this much left to do on the long side.

 

Then, it's on to the inside supports....then decking!

Hubby is doing a fantastic job!  He's making the supports so strong that we could eventually build on a room using them.

We may actually get our deck finished this year!

I hope you are having a fantastic week!

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?