By the way... Dylan's Built us a Deck!

From way back to January 2012, we have had plans to redo the deck.

Here are pictures of the old deck:

You can't tell quite as much from these pictures, but the boards were really warped (see the top rail in the middle picture especially). The whole deck was one big splinter so we knew we absolutely didn't want Vander on it. After really wanting to redo the deck since we owned the house, we finally committed to doing it this summer.

We wanted to go from the 12 by 12 wood deck to a 12 by 16 composite deck and move the stairs to go down to the patio instead of to the yard. We would be able to add 50 square fee to the deck while also adding 50 square feet to the yard.

Initially we looked into the contractor route, but after getting one bid in person and two verbally after describing the project, the cost was going to come out to be around $14,000. That was way out of our price range.

So we looked into doing it ourselves. We had previously used a Home Depot deck building program, but now that we are on a Mac, their program isn't compatible, so we had to use Lowes' program. They do give full details on where to put all the cement and joists and stuff (Dylan did the construction, not me, clearly), so Dylan decided he felt comfortable doing it himself.

With the help of a family friend for the engineering part (joists, etc.) and my dad for the laying of decking and rails, Dylan got 95% of it done from May to August (the lattice was completed this last weekend, which is why I haven't posted about it until now).

Much to my displeasure, Dylan did decide we ought to go the permit route. That is a significant reason why the whole project took so long. It took several weeks to get the initial go ahead and two trips down to Castle Rock during the day, super awesome...

Overall most of the summer consisted of Vander and I hanging out a couple nights a week and most weekends away from the house so we didn't get in Dylan's way.

It turned out beautifully!

We loved using the deck this Summer and Fall! We let Vander go out and play on the deck whenever he wanted. We had the patio furniture on the deck and would just hang out, grill, and I even ate breakfast out there a couple mornings. The deck is shaded until around 10am, and then starts getting shade again around 2pm. While it is too hot to be on there during the middle of the day, it is fantastic the rest of the time. The rails actually don't get hot, just the decking, which is comparable to any decking really.

Pardon the rest of the yard which is in horrible shape. We did the front yard last Summer, the deck this year and will be resodding and stuff next summer to get the yard more in line with what we want.

Dylan did a fantastic job and I am so glad this big project is done!