All hands-on deck...
You start these things and you just know. It's not going to be done quickly. It's not going to be fun. But you have to do it.
On a Sunday morning, four weeks ago, I began this project. Over the past few months as I looked over my deck, I could see the drooping where my deck wasn't level. As I've talked about before, a family of woodchucks had made their home underneath the concrete block of our screened-in porch. They made a mess of the under structure of my deck. It was time for me to fix it.
Each weekend, I put in my four to eight hours working on the deck. I cut down the old, rotted material and took them to the dump. I asked for advice from my contractor friends, my neighbor friends, and even friends that don’t like me. I knew it wasn't going to be fun, but it had to be done.
But here I am now. Nearly four weeks later, with the level deck, completely stained, and looking quite amazing.
It took a lot of effort. There were days that I was nearly in tears for how much work still needed to be done. I knew if I didn't work on it a little bit every day, we'd be getting close to winter and that's the last thing I needed was to be working on this when it's cold outside.
I'm in the last stages now. It feels pretty darn good, I must admit. I saved a lot of money by doing it myself. I also knew that I would probably never be able to get a contractor to come in and do it quickly or cheaply. I was right.
As tired and exhausted as I am every night from working on the deck, I have a great sense of accomplishment in the fact that I did 95% of the deck myself. It looks good.
I don't consider myself to be an accomplished carpenter like my father was. But I’ve faked it well. With help from friends and tons of YouTube videos, I was able to restore my deck to even better than its original state. I put a lot of time and energy into this project and as tired & sore as I am, it was worth it. I figure that I saved us thousands of dollars by doing this myself. I’m not even sure I could have been able to get a contractor to work on this project before winter. They are all so busy.
It is flat and level now, which is quite amazing if you consider what it looked like just three to four short weeks ago. I am beyond happy to report that it is 99% completed. I look forward to getting back to doing normal things on the weekends like running, reading, and just relaxing in my black leather recliner chair.
Tired bones. Sore back. New deck. Totally worth it.