Awesome Surprise

While we were away on vacation we had friends stay over one night in our house en route from the airport to their home in Pagosa Springs.

There was a message stuck in the blinds of the door leading out to our backyard which read "Hey, Nice Deck!" and we thought our friends had put it there - ragging us yet again because the deck is still unfinished. (Its been a long-standing joke among our friends that the deck has taken such a long time to complete - Warren tore it down in July and has slowly started to rebuild it).

Warren opened the door to the backyard and found the deck to be 90% completed!! What a fantastic surprise!! We found out that 4 of our friends came over last Sunday afternoon while we were away and did the bulk of the work in 4 hours.

Warren was so chuffed with the deck and kept walking around on it with a big grin on his face. Of course I could kiss every one of those 4 friends on the lips for doing this for us...and maybe I will even though they are all married and 1 of them is a woman!

All that needs to be done is the stairs (3 steps really) and the railing that goes around the deck. We have most of the wood for this but I need to stain it in the same chocolate brown as the Trex before we can put it up.

Yippee...I am so excited. (BTW, Trex is a mixture of wood composite and plastics - it lasts forever and never needs to be painted, unlike wood which dries out and splinters over a few years here in Colorado).

Warren has a great idea for the walkway along the side of our house. It is all sand right now; most of which has ended up in my house because the dog brings it in! This has become a point of utter frustration which has lead to threats of me leaving and living elsewhere until this project is finished!

Warren's idea is to use the wood from the old deck and make a boardwalk which will cover the sand and finish off the back area nicely. We were going to either pave it with stones or cement it but while we were walking around the town of Grand Lake last week, we walked down to the lake along the walkway which was a boardwalk consisting of large pieces of wood the same size as the deck wood that is now lying against our fence in our backyard. Warren's excited about this idea. Heck, I'm excited & so everyone wins.

Now we just need to have good weather and free weekends to finish it all off before the snow starts to fall!