Deckstravaganza: Lesson plan

I've learned a lot doing this Big Outdoor Do-Over. I know we're still in the demo stage (tonight: we'll finally clean up all the concrete we busted over the weekend), but we're seriously hoping Mama Nature cuts us some slack and brings the sun over to our little remodel party later this week so we can start to rebuild our pile of rubble. In the mean time, a few things we've learned:

1. Cement takes a whole flipping week to fully cure. Surprise! We're hoping to pour our three footings (42 inches deep, by the way to avoid the dreaded Iowa freeze line) this weekend and pour the cement once Russ, our dear permit man, gives the final OK on hole depth. Meanwhile, we've got some siding to replace and a ledger to attach, so we won't really be twiddling our thumbs during the curing time, but seriously - who knew cement was so stubborn?
   
2. Time flies when you work and remodel. We've got a carefully crafted schedule for things to do on our lunch hours to ensure we're ready to get to work (weather permitting) once we get home. If one call goes unreturned or one things gets forgotten at the hardware store, it wastes a lot of time we could have spent smashing or building.
   
3. Friends with the ability to haul deck debris to a dumpster are worth their weight in gold.
   
4. Brats for dinner almost every night isn't that bad.
   
5. A glass of water and Simon and Garfunkel's Cecilia is all you need to power through almost any rough patch of demo. I wonder what song will steer us through the murky waters of construction.
   
   
6. Bumble bees love bright pink t-shirts.
   
7. Combined, Jeriann, weather.com and a healthy dose of women's intuition are 99% accurate at predicting the weather.
   
8. Was just informed that the pros never wait a week for cement to cure, which goes to show that there are two, completely opposite answers for EVERYTHING in home improvement. Yeesh.

Any additional pearls of wisdom? We're just getting started, imagine how genius we'll be by the end of this whole shebang!