Long Time, No See, BIG CHANGES!

Hello blog land,


I see my last post was on 4 April 2013. Since then, we've had a baby! Started landscaping!  Replaced a sewer pipe! And redid our back deck. Whew.

Baby G and her dad on the back deck

Honestly, I'm not quite ready to blog about baby other than to say that baby G is the awesomest baby to grace planet Earth and there will be many blogs about her soon.

So off to the other fun topics. The landscaping/sewer pipe are in progress and not very well documented because I'm terrible at remember to take pictures, so let's talk about the deck. :)

When we moved in, there was a 10ft by 12 ft wooden deck on the back of our house, accessible via the sliding glass door off of the kitchen/dining. On the right side of the deck, there were three stairs down to a small square of concrete and the back yard.

When I first saw the deck, I fell in love with it. After we moved in, love quickly downgraded to "like" and then to "get rid of this thing!"

Here's why we didn't love it:

1) Maintenance. Wood decks require lots of maintenance. If ours had been in good condition, we probably would've been willing to do the work, i.e. power wash it and either paint or refinish it. BUT, the railings were horribly wobbly and the corners that were most exposed had some rot. (Funny story: when we moved in, before we had our fence, I tied the dogs to the railing and they ripped a huge chunk of it off. Oops.)

2) Size: 10x12 was really awkward. Not quite big enough for a large table and chairs unless you wanted to perpetually be walking around them. Also not big enough for the dogs to have a place to sunbathe unless I folded the table and chairs up.  Also, we needed to store other things under the eave such as propane tanks and some random gardening stuff.  And the grill was down in the yard which worked out alright but wasn't fabulous.

So here's what we brainstormed:

1) Have the existing deck get a facelift (new railings and new floorboards) and then expand it. The bids for this work were over $3,000.

2) Deal with it as-is. Nope. I really wasn't OK with it as-is. And I wasn't willing to put in the work to clean/paint it when it was rotting and falling apart.

3) Replace it with something cheaper. But what?

Well, we found out that replacing it with concrete was going to be cheaper. But was it going to be uglier?  In my opinion, no. As you'll see we found a contractor who did decorative concrete so it wouldn't just look like a big grey slab.

Believe it or not, the concrete work came in at about 60% of what the deck repair bid came in at. Sheesh! And concrete is muuuuuccchhh lower maintenance. We should seal it every few years and clean with mild cleaner when mishaps occur. No sanding. No staining. Yay!

My sunbathing beauties on our ugly deck.

The photo above was taken out the back door. As you can see, it's pretty weatherbeaten. And the three dogs all but take up the entire space. Please don't mind the hammock stand or any of the other detritus.

First we saved ourselves a few hundred dollars by tearing out the deck ourselves. And when I say "we" I mean Don and a friend. It's great to have friends! The guys made quick work out of it. They ninja kicked down the railings, then cut it in thirds. They shoved the thirds in the back of a huge pickup and that was that! All that was left was all the rocks/trash from under the deck, the stairs, and the little concrete slab at the bottom of the stairs.

Right after the deck was torn out! The stairs are not in their original position.

Next, we decided that we wanted to salvage as many of those dark grey rocks as possible to landscape the south end of the house with. They aren't pretty but they're free! Don pulled the landscape fabric out from underneath them and then used a big rake and shovel to put them in buckets for later. Hard work, husband!

Mr. H probably won't be happy about having his photo up but I can always delete it, right?

About halfway done collecting rocks.

All done rock collecting. The dogs were exhausted just watching him work.

There was a fairly significant drop from the back door to the ground with the deck gone. I didn't measure it, but maybe 30 inches? Don affixed a ramp covered in shingles so the pups could traverse it without breaking their necks. He originally built the deck when Barley blew his knee (oh yes, forgot that happened too, since I last blogged!) and it went off of the left side of the deck since he wasn't supposed to use stairs. You can see a sliver of it in the left side of the photo above.




All that was left was for the contractors to work their magic. And magic it was!! They leveled, framed, poured, leveled and smoothed. A lot of work and precision! But the real magic was when they did the stamped border. It was an elaborate process from adding the coloring and the stamping to hand troweling to make it look like stone. I couldn't help but just stare out the window and be in awe of how art-like it was. (And how time consuming it was as well!)  It definitely added a few hundred to our final budget but I think it was very, very important since most people will tell you not to get rid of the deck for resale purposes. No, a concrete patio is not as inviting as a deck, but a concrete patio with a beautiful border and some planter boxes is the next best thing.

It's framed!

They still haven't removed the framing but we are using it and loving it.

Ta da!

A close-up of the corner. We went with exposed aggregate for the main part because it's more durable than other finishes (read: can be pressure washed!) and isn't slippery when wet. It also stains less and hides what stains it does get.

A close-close-up of the border.

Snazzy, no? Oh, and I forgot to mention that the concrete patio is nearly triple the size of our old deck!

All that's lift is figuring out how to arrange things on it. And maybe conning Mr. H into buying me new patio furniture! Hah! Maybe not.