.project nine: deck

BEFORE:

I can't believe it has already been TWO years since we demolished this old deck and built the new one. It's about time I shared the whole process here on the blog! We love our new deck so much and it is crazy weird to see it how it used to look when we moved here…It was small…and dangerous…and gross…

 

This scary narrow rickety old staircase needed to come down alltogether since we were expanding the deck on that side and putting stairs down from the opposite side of the deck:

 

This hole in the vinyl was right in the center of the deck and it was literally a death trap. Water had deteriorated the plywood underneath. Aaron almost fell through once:

 

Aaron's Mom had given us this adorable table she made and chairs she reupholstered for our future renovated deck. She is a sweetheart!

Our new lumber arrived and we were ready to go!

That's a lot of wood!:

Air had already dug the hole for the future support under the new staircase:

 

We cleared the deck and wished it a fond farewell:

The men got to work on the demo (the fun part)

  

Down came the staircase:

This was the strangest sight to see out our back door!:

 

We kept the majority of the old support beams that were in good condition and just painted them and replaced the water damaged ones, and added on two more on the right side for the expansion (on the right side):

On the left you can see the new extension for the new (wide and sturdy) staircase:

Soooo thankful (still) for Air's family who ALL helped us out so so much…

Here it is! Ready for new decking (which went in sooo fast thanks to Tessa and Tamera!):

 

view from underneath:

 

And then the railing came after lots of calculations:

 

And the staircase came after many many more calculations:

 

And this is how it looked for a few months before we could finish the stair railing:

And the railing on the staircase was the last thing to go in, but it turned out magnificent!:

I hereby declare this

AFTER!!!!:

and a reminder of BEFORE:

So anyway… this was two years ago now and we've still been trying to figure out if we can make anything out of all that scrap wood from the old deck.

Over the last couple weeks Air has used it to build this sweet bench for the fire pit (made out of the beams that were water damaged under the sink hole)…

and this awesome swingset (made with wood from the old banisters, I believe?)

As you can see against the fence there is still a TON of scrap wood. So maybe you'll hear about more projects in the near future? Maybe not? Air is always surprising us with his skills!