Da Deck

Last month, my insurance company called to tell me that they were going to be dropping the coverage on my house. Why, you ask? Because the back deck was 28" inches tall and needed railings on it to be up to code. And I had a month to get it fixed. Dad and I looked at it, made trips to Home Depot and worked out costs to build the railings. We priced it out if we did everything ourselves or if we used pre-built railings and posts. The difference? $250 if we built it from scratch. $350 if we used everything pre-built. We decided that the $100 was worth it in time and went all pre-built.


We bought all the materials that we needed and headed to my house to start throwing it together. As we are discovering with nearly everything in my house, the deck was built wrong. The floorboards were uneven with the end of the deck. There were not enough boards to reach to the side of the deck, and one of the boards was cut too short. So much for the slam the railing on plan. So we unscrewed EVERY LAST floorboard (and discovered that he hadn't used deck screws either).

Then we screwed them all back in so that they were even on the end, finished off the side of the deck, and replaced the missing board. After all that was complete, we added the railings and moved the stairs closer to the house.

Its finally done. Makes the deck look so different, but I'm looking forward to getting a BBQ and patio set out there to enjoy it. Eventually, it will be finished out so that it connects to the back door, but thats a whole other kettle of fish!