Deck under construction

Deck under construction

You didn’t think I’d go straight into the new deck pictures already, did you?  No way. First you get to see the new deck construction in action.

After a couple weeks of false starts, postponements and weather delays, I was honestly starting to wonder if the deck was ever going to happen. (I am maybe a little pessimistic.) But then one day I left my house with this:

And came home to this:

Whoa.

It’s a really weird feeling to see part of your house just GONE.

And sort of precariously perched.

Trixie had to inspect and see what the heck was going on.

Our air conditioning units (we have two because the attic is on a separate unit) had also been moved around to the side of the house, where they’re staying. It’s so much nicer to have them around the side where we don’t have to stare at them all the time, and luckily they are also right by the neighbor’s unit so we don’t have to worry about messing up her view or her backyard (I’d hate to be the jerk who moves them right next to her patio table or something). They weren’t hooked up yet in this photo, because that took… well, a lot longer than I wanted it to considering we were having 90-degree days. They’ve also since removed all those weeds you can see in the background.

As construction continued on the second day, they poured the cement footings (no more cement blocks!) and built a temporary support for the roof overhang. This part made me nervous. What if someone bumped a post and the whole roof came crashing down?! But they assured me this was just a precaution and since that overhang is built very sturdily into the house — and not just attached to it after the fact — there was nothing to worry about.

And, at least there was a butter knife if we needed it. (I love seeing what gets dug up every time we do construction around this old house.)

Then this guy showed up to inspect the progress.

The deck continued to take shape and for several days we had to literally walk a plank to get into the house. In case you’ve wondered while looking at these photos, and I’ve never mentioned it, the solid brown door that’s straight ahead is actually non-functional. We’ve thought about opening it up to use it and at one point even considered removing the other back door so we could claim that extra wall in the kitchen. That’s not happening and we don’t really have any plans for the old door at this point (though I should show you the inside of that door sometime because it is gorgeous! I’m assuming it’s the original door and the kitchen door is newer… why someone would do that, I have no idea.) It’s in our plans to open up those shuttered windows eventually, as well.

And I’m not going any farther because I don’t want to spoil THE BIG REVEAL!

All in all deck construction took about three weeks. These photos were all just the first week, and laying down the actual flooring and then lots of detail work took up the rest of the time. We actually had a little party the week before the deck was technically finished because we were just too excited to wait!

And speaking of waiting… come back tomorrow for the finished photos!!