Beginnings or The Before Pictures

We had had a wooden deck attached to the back of our house.  It was not maintained during the years our house was a rental so it has looked horrible since we moved in.  In addition, it was a bad height--too high to comfortably climb on and off of comfortably.  It needed one more step, or something.  We haven't liked it and have been talking about what to do instead.

Yesterday our neighbors began the excavation of their new home and so there is an enormous pile of dirt in the empty lot across the street.  We know the guy who is doing the excavating and he told Kent we could have as much of the dirt as we wanted.  So Kent said to me yesterday, "What could we do with a bunch of topsoil?"  I mentioned that we would need a bunch of dirt to fill in under where the deck has been when we removed it to bring it up to the level of the grass, and Kent said, "Well, maybe I'll start working on removing the deck tomorrow."

Secretly, just between you and me, I was delighted.  I really want to make big changes in the backyard, but the first step really needs to be the deck change.  We want to put in a paver patio.  I have been unable to find someone to even come out and give us a bid on how much it would cost to have the work done for us, so we may end up doing it ourselves which will save us a lot of money but will probably be a big challenge.  We've had grass torn up in the front yard for a year now waiting for a paver path to be laid, and that hasn't happened yet, but perhaps I need to be more positive about it happening.

Anyway, today we deconstructed the deck.  We began by trying to unscrew all the screws and remove each plank, but the screws were not cooperating and both Kent and I were getting really frustrated.  Then Kent realized we were making it more difficult than it needed to be and got out the electric hand saw.  He cut through the boards along the underneath supports and the whole thing came apart quite nicely.  It was a big job, we encountered spiders and all sorts of garbage, but by the end of the afternoon, we were deckless and the space underneath was tidied up and ready for the next step.  We do have a HUGE pile of wood in the driveway next to the garage, but Monday morning I'll get a trailer and haul it all to the dump.

Hooray for project progress!

These are the before pictures.

Boring, non-maintained, slightly too high deck.

 

These are the after pictures.

No more deck, only three huge concrete pilings we aren't sure what to do with or how to remove.

We may rent a jackhammer, we may ask our neighbor to come over with his tractor and smash them,

we may look for a skidsteer in the neighborhood we can appropriate for an hour and break them up.

The stuff along the house isn't entirely finished either, but we'd been working for like five hours and we were tired.

Really, really tired.

And hot.

Really, really hot.

This is the pile of wood from the deck.

Not only that, but the people who lived here before us had a bunch of barn wood stored under the deck.

It had largely rotten and had all sorts of nasty critters living underneath it.

We killed three back widows (they give me the heebie-jeebies).

I should have taken the time to go get the trailer today so we could load the wood directly into it,

but I didn't so Monday morning I'll have to deal with this all over again.

But it's going away, which makes me happy!