The Deck Project Is Complete

It's finally here! The long awaited deck pictures that many of you have been asking about. I had good intentions of posting them yesterday, but Sunday came and went before I knew it. We had a busy weekend and I'll tell you about that in my next post because if I make some of you wait any longer, it could get ugly. LOL. A little bit about our deck project and then the photos I promise! Back in the spring we talked about taking our old deck down and replacing it with a patio. The original plan was to put in a stamped patio and then we were going to landscape around it. We decided we weren't going to do anything until after we got back from our trip out west. With that said, when we got back we put it off and put it off, and then it got into July and we said if we were going to do anything we better get a move on it so we can enjoy it a little before summer is over. After visiting a few of the home improvement stores we got to talking and changed our mind to put a new deck in instead of a patio. We thought we'd put in the TREK decking, but after Greg read up on it a little he saw that there is actually lots of problems with it and they tend to mold easy. We stumbled upon a hardwood for decks at Menard's one day and thought, "hey this might look pretty cool with our house." We decided to go with a Brazilian hardwood called Cambara. So to make a long story short Greg started knocking down the old deck and we didn't have anything bought for a new deck or know exactly what size we wanted. So we quickly got moving and designed something at Menard's, got the supplies ordered, and at that point there was no turning back.

We ordered the wood about mid-July and of course the hardwood was special order and took two weeks to get so it wouldn't be in until July 30th. While we waited for that to come in we figured we'd get started on getting the holes dug, posts in, and get the deck framed so we had half our order delivered and then we'd go back and pick up the special order part. We found a guy who was building a deck across the street for our neighbors to come and dig the holes. The ground here is extremely hard and once you dig a little you hit clay. So he dug the holes and then said if we wanted he'd come back the next day and frame the deck for us for $100. At this point (due to the holes getting dug a week later than expected) we figured we'd take him up on the offer because the hardwood was coming in the next day. It was the best $100 we ever spent because what two guys did in about two hours was a lot more than Greg could of done by himself in a couple days.

For about two weeks mostly in the evenings after work and some of the weekends, Greg has worked very hard putting the rest of the deck together. He did a great job for his first deck and I'm really proud of him. He's worked and worked and worked and it really looks nice. We ran out of screws twice and had to go make special trips to Menard's to get more. Not only has he worked his butt off building the deck, but he has also been planting bushes around the deck too. Not an easy task digging the holes in our yard as I mentioned, let alone doing it in this extremely hot weather we've been having! It's all coming together and while there's lots more landscaping and some patio blocks we probably want to put in down by the steps, that will probably wait until next spring. So after 1325 screws (no I didn't count them all, but I knew how many were in each board and multiplied it by all the boards) the deck is done and it's really nice to have it finished. Thanks honey for all your hard work. You did an awesome job! Now to the photos!!!! I failed to take pictures along the way pretty much. I often thought about it late and night and then by the next morning it slipped my mind again. So most of these are at the end.

This is the only picture I have of our old deck. You probably saw some of it when I posted the picture last year of our grill blowing over. This was when Greg was tearing it apart! We truly do apologize neighbors for our hideous deck we had for three years. While the deck itself wasn't all that bad, the stain turned out way different than we wanted. Ugh! I can't believe we left it like that for three years.

One angle of the deck complete before stairs.

Another angle before the stairs were finished

Stairs to the house completed & three of the bushes planted.
Stairs coming up from the yard completed & a closer look at the bushes planted on one side. The area where the picnic table, stairs, & grill are is where we still want to do something. We're not exactly sure, but probably put in some big patio blocks of some sort.

Getting there... more bushes planted. Still need to "clean up" dirt and put mulch in.

Another angle of deck finished with bushes and furniture on deck. Still not sure how I'm arranging the furniture, but wanted to get it up on the deck.

View from in the house. I need to spray paint my little blue table still. That's on my list this week, but too windy today. The red planter boxes I just found on clearance at Meijer and am trying to decide if I'm keeping them or not.