Deck Hiatus

I know I've been pretty quiet lately. It's not for lack of things to write about, but rather, lack of time! Brad and I are in the throws of the deck project and it's keeping us extremely busy. We've spent three full weekends (including the long Memorial Day weekend) and a few random days now working. Who knew it would be so much work? But it's fun work.
The first weekend we spent renting a Toro Dingo to drill nine, 9" wide x 46" deep holes for our beam posts. We used another Dingo bucket attachment to move dirt into my garden boxes. Finally, we rented a cement mixer to mix 21 bags of 80 lb concrete and make some cement post holders!

Drillin' with the Auger

Moving that DirtCreating cement posts

After the cement posts dried for 2 days, the next steps were to start creating the beams that would hold the joists and decking. This point is when Brad's Dad's, expertise was much appreciated. He's been helping us out, and we certainly couldn't do this project without him!

Leveling some BeamsCreating some joists

After the Beams were all leveled and stable, it was time to build the joist framing. For this part, we invited over my brother-in-law and his lovely family to help. Mostly that meant my 3 year old niece Sylvie distracted the boys while they worked, but it was some help we did appreciate, and it's always cute to see my niece ask a million questions about "what are you doing?"

Frogs on the joistsSylvie is "helping"

After the joists were all built, it was time to build some stairs and lay actual deck boards. I would say this was definitely part of the project that I underestimated in terms of time. There's so many intricate cuts and angles and measurements that need to get taken, and I'm just thankful I have people in my life who enjoy doing those things.

Varying degrees of progress

So here we are, Sunday June 7th, and we're still not quite done. We've got some final decking posts to finish, but more importantly, we've got a lot of railings yet to create. In the mean time though, it's quite a useable space, and I couldn't resist putting together my new patio furniture and umbrella! And you can bet your cookies I made everyone eat dinner outdoors ON the deck AT the new patio table while working on Saturday night. :-) Here's to hoping we can get everything at least mostly complete by next weekend, and then we'll be all ready to celebrate with proper drinks and a few friends!

Almost complete!Patio dinner smiles