Monday, May 24, 2010

Deckstravaganza: Nine sweaty hours

Saturday, we were able to trick our friend, who we'll call Doc, into helping out ALL DAY LONG. Those of you who have built a deck know how intensely valuable this is. We were primed to take full advantage of our little helper. The poor guy even came over in a sweatshirt, thinking it'd be a little chilly. Sadly for all of us and our hydration levels, this was not the case. We were hit with an 85 degree day complete with a blazing sun and sticky humidity. Lucky us!
Anyway, we got started on attaching the deck boards. I was in charge of pilot holes with the puny drill and Doc followed with the Serious Drill to actually place the drills. Meanwhile, Hubs was in charge of this:
 
Just kidding; we all know he's far too industrious. He was fighting the other trellis pole and getting that into place and stopping whenever we hit a post so he could notch out around it. Doc and I were too nervous to do any cutting for fear it might not meet Hubs' exacting standards.
Eventually, we finally got the trellis post into place (of course when I say we, I mean the dudes did the legwork and I photojournalized).


After that, we were able to really move - we made huge deck board progress and Hubs was able to dig out and pour the concrete footing for the stairs.


Someone was absolutely no help. He'll remain unnamed.

I didn't count how many of these are on the deck because it would have made me weep. Lots. All perfectly aligned and beautiful!

Ah! Such a pretty expanse of wood!

At the end of the day, we'd racked up the following:

  • Three giant bottles of Powerade - emptied

  • 10 ABBA songs listened to because we were too focused on working to mess with my embarrassing iPod

  • One case of heat rash (Hubs, but he's tough; he'll be OK)

  • One nearly floored deck. We left one board off because we were so tired and wanted to fully enjoy the final board.

  • Two giant drilling-induced blisters

  • Three red necks

  • Six bags of concrete to fill a 5ft by 1ft pad

  • Two drill battery changes

  • Twelve hours of sleep preparing for Sunday

No comments:

Post a Comment

 
Blog Directory