Two steps forward, ten steps back.

Step one of the deck project began with relocating some nearby bushes because the deck is going to be enlarged.  That went smoothly.

And then the snow came. And the cold weather. Not just for a day or two. Wintry weather has lasted more than a week.  So I started step two - the demo - with a snow covered deck.  At first I thought I’d be taking it apart board by board. But instead, since no wood was worth salvaging,  I took a chainsaw to it.  And because Martha built it decades ago, without the proper nails (of course) it just about fell apart on its own. I had planned on three days for the demo but I finished in one, including loading it all in our trailer and hauling 3 loads to the transfer station. Which was good because I needed two days and a bottle of Ibuprofen to recuperate.

And then things went downhill.

Years ago when the deck first started looking like crap, Martha wanted to paint it. I was totally against that since it would require so much maintenance, but she painted it anyway. And because she is not very particular in the way she works, she splattered a darker grey paint all over the light grey vinyl siding. Then she tried to paint the vinyl to cover it. Over the years it became a splotchy mess that looked terrible. So, before the deck went back up, I wanted to replace it.  

First step -  rip off the old pieces. But I found you need a special tool for that.  Go buy tool.

It was so friggin’ cold that it was twice as hard to get off as it should have been and some of the trim moulding snapped because it was so brittle.  Had to replace that.

Then under the french doors I found a whole section of rotted wood.  Aarrggghhh!

Now needing wood I had to hook the trailer back up. But it still had the last load of deck debris so that needed to be emptied first. We had lost a huge tree branch in the snow storm so I wanted to throw that in the trailer also.  Got out the chainsaw to find the chain now needed sharpening. Spent an hour looking for the spare chain (because every good lesbian carries a spare chainsaw chain, right?) Finally got that fixed, the branch cut up, trip to the landfill, trip to Home Depot (where all their computer systems were down and it took almost 45 minutes to check out)  

Cut out the rotten wood, filled with epoxy, and pieced in replacement wood.  It took me almost 3 days to replace 9 pieces of siding!  My hands were cold and raw and shredded, I wrecked my knees with all the kneeling on the frozen ground, there’s not one part of my body that doesn’t ache, and I am now way behind schedule and haven’t even begun the first step of construction. And now it is raining.

I have been trying to find some the blessings in all of this, but the best I can do this week is:

I am grateful to have a soft warm bed to collapse in every night.