Tag Archives: deck

Our home improvement progress

We have sort of hit a wall this year.  Looking back on it, almost nothing happened that was supposed to.  First off, we sort of ran out of funds and time.  What with the $4.87 per gallon gas this summer, expenses from my children, the ever increasing cost of health care, and all the time [...]

Removing the old deck, Part II

This has been slow going for a number of reasons:

I am trying to save as much lumber for re-use as possible.  There is one 2×8 that cracked in half around a large knot.  The rest of it seems to be pretty sound and can be re-used for the decking material on the new porch.  This [...]

Removing the old deck

This started as a simple project. I was intending to remove the hand railing from the old deck on the front of the house and replace it with something similar to the railing I built for the new deck. Easy, right?

Then the factor struck… Known as the “F” factor, this is loosely [...]

I water sealed the deck

And then it rained.  The weather forecast was for dry conditions until Tuesday.  I used the Advanced Thompson’s Water Seal.  According to the instructions; “Do not apply if rain is expected within 48 hours.” This has been how things have been going lately.  On the plus side, I did it yesterday afternoon when it was [...]

Renting tools

Over the last few years I have completed several projects that required renting tools from the local tool/machine rental business. This can be a good learning experience or it can be total frustration. For example, when I installed my gutter drains, I rented a Caterpillar 303 excavator. I really needed to do [...]