Deck-atude

When we bought our house, we didn't realize there as a significant low spot in the middle of our front sidewalk. We figured out this spring that every time it rained, we were leaping over puddles or tromping through the mud.

So it looked sort of like this.

I asked my Father in law if there was something we could do to increase drainage there and his suggestion was to build a deck. So we did.

He stopped by last night with his tractor and ripped out the bushes at the front of the house. He also broke up part of the sidewalk that would run under the deck so that we can widen or driveway, once we have saved up the money to get that done. For right now, we will put some stepping stones in there, to keep it from being all muddy.

Last night, while I took the kids to see Camp Rock, The Musical, they bought the wood

And started building the frame.

They worked until about 10:30 last night simply because it was so much cooler. FIL showed back about 6:30 this morning and the finished out the frame. My Phantom friend came over and brought another drill (and donuts, those are the kind of workers to have!) and as fast as FIL could get the boards off the trailer and fitted, Phantom, RF and I were screwing the decking down. About 1:30, we simultaneously got hungry, ran out of screws and my drill died. While FIL got more screws, I plugged in my drill to charge and we pick up pizza for lunch. After lunch, we finished off the decking, with my drill dying again, 3 screws from the end.

It really looks nice and MIL is bringing us a wrought iron bistro set to put out there until we can get around to making some chairs and a table to sit out front. We need some dirt to fill in where the sidewalk was and around the base of the boards and we need to mount my solar lights to the deck (so we don't have to pull them up every time we mow) and we'll be all done. From start of the decking to finish, including lunch, it took us two and a half hours, with 4 people working pretty much non-stop.

Our house looks pretty different, with that on the front now!