Let it be known that re-surfacing a deck is tough work

Well 4th of July weekend is passed and I am exhausted. My dad came down from Maryland, and spent the long weekend with us ripping up our deck. The deck runs the length of the back side of our house, facing the East. Last year, I spent a week sanding and refinishing the deck in an attempt to salvage it. But when spring rolled around, we noticed the deck was in bad shape again and decided it was time to just bite the bullet and start over. So with the long weekend, we figured it would be a good time to do this.

On our way home from Superman Returns, we stopped a Home Depot and got some great advice on redoing the deck as well as some essential tools. Decks are now being done with screws and drills as opposed to nails and nail-guns. We then headed home to begin ripping apart the deck with whatever sunlight we had left.

Monday morning we were up and working by 10AM, and the temp outside was already 90 and climbing (and remember, the deck is on the East side of the house, so full sunlight in the mornings). We decided after evaluating how long it took us to rip up the little we had done last night, we were never going to finish before dad left on the Tuesday, so we opted to only do the lower half of the deck, which is still a 20’ x 15’ area. With frequent breaks for water and cooling down inside, we finally had the deck cleared by 3PM (by now the temp was 95+ – with a heat index over 105). Dad and I headed to Home Depot to get the wood and screws to begin. We stopped that first evening around 8, with only ¼ the deck laid down, and 3 exhausted bodies.

Tuesday morning we decided to get started as soon as we could, and we were out there by 8AM (temp around 90 again) laying more boards down. By 10AM we were nearly out of our 10lbs of screws and we sent Traci to purchase more and get some piping for a drain spout that just dumped under the deck. After that, we just rolled till 11:30 when we broke for lunch. We were back to work by 1PM (95+ again) and laid the last board around 4PM. Exhausted and worn out, we cleaned up all our tools and headed back inside for showers.

Dad was on his way home by 5:30 and Traci and I were getting ready for a concert that we had tickets for that evening. The deck is looking so much better (thank you Dad!) but we still have a second half to go. Ah, the joys of home ownership.