Let's get started!

Welcome to Steve builds a deck.

My niece, and most of my family for that matter, have never seen where I live, the little house on the prairie we call home. So she decided to have her high school graduation party at my house.


What does having a party have to do with this blog? The house is small and my family is big. I come from a family of five brothers and two sisters. I don't know how many nieces and nephews I have, and can't remember their names most of the time. I needed more space, fast.


So I've decided to build a deck. Easy enough, I just have to build this deck by June 5th. I could build a little every weekend but that would just drag this out. I have decided to take a week off from work to build my deck.
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This blog will chronicle the project to share the progress with my family and friends. My hope is this blog will also keep me on task and let you contribute your experience or ideas.

Let's take a quick tour.


These are pictures I took this morning. The house was bought new in 2002 for $109,000 the idea was to buy a house I could afford to keep if I had to drive a school bus the rest of my life.



The front yard is filling in nicely, I want to plant a row of Crape Myrtle along the sidewalk. Maybe next year.







This is the view out the back door, hard to believe there wasn't even any grass here when we moved in.



Here is an other view to the south east, that's the garden in the back. Oh that dog is Bandit. He will supervise the project.







The view of the house from the back.



This is the the gate to the secret garden. The poor little
weather vane gets a workout. It get's very windy here.







The little rain we had this year has gotten the grapes really going. Hum, maybe a home wine blog?





This is where the deck will go. My plan is to simply purchase the wood I'll need to get started today and draw up the plans, I hope to post those tonight.



And away we go...

Then again maybe not, meet Pearl, she is a little temperamental and has decided not to cooperate today. She likes to run when it's cool so we may try again this evening or first thing in the morning!

It's alive!



Pearl decided to start up after all. Made it to the Lumber Despot and got the wood to build the deck frame. Cheaper than I thought it would be:

7 - 6x2x12
5 - 6x2x16
6 - 4x4x8 posts
3 - 80 lbs bags of cement
cement forms
1 - box of deck screws

$114.00

Now what!

We just made it home in time to unload the truck and get the bags of cement in the garage. It's flooding out here in manor and we just got hit by strong winds and pea size hail.