My father-in-law asked me if I would be available Sunday to help him swap a few deck boards at his place. “It should be a quick job. We’re only replacing a few bad ones,” he said. Well, it indeed started off with “a few bad” boards…
On the porch itself, we put in three new boards. On the ramp, we used 4 long boards to replace 7 boards. As you can see from the above photo, the thought eventually was to just go ahead and replace all the ramp boards. And we did.
It actually came out pretty good and only took about half the day. Then at some point, the decision was made to do the whole porch.
In the above photo, you can see the three boards we replaced. Once we knew we were doing the whole porch, we had to rip out the rest of the boards. It was a job! My father-in-law and brother-in-law ran up to Home Depot to get more boards and more screws while I ripped out the deck boards.
When they returned, they helped me with the remaining boards. We worked pretty much up until dinner time and we called it a day. We still had half the porch to finish which meant we were back at it on Monday afternoon. I stayed until about 6pm, and left because I needed to get the kids home, bathed and in bed for school the next day. They were almost finished when I left.
Tuesday morning, I had to stop over there after dropping Ella off at school. My wife bought something from a fundraiser and I had to bring over the money for it. When I walked up the ramp I saw that they had all but the very end board done. They didn’t finish it because my father-in-law was going to put in a different size board to avoid cutting the size they were using.
It looked fantastic. I can tell you, though, Sunday night I was sore. Monday night, I was stiff and sore. My hips were on fire, probably because we were hoping over deck boarding all day. My knees were killing me too because we were on them the entire time we were screwing in deck boards.
I’m always glad to help out my father-in-law. Lord knows how many times he has helped me! I’m happy it is done and that my mother-in-law is happy with the way it looks.
Looking back at the past seven days, it’s been busy!
Still Kickin’
We had some issues with the soccer league that we signed Andrew up for. The communication prior to the actually first day was a mess. Do we need a uniform or not? Will the coach be there or not? It was not very well organized.
The first week, there was no coach. They texted the night before saying that neither the head coach or the assistant coach would be able to be there. This led to a mess of text messages wondering what the kids were going to do. They had two teen players lead the kids through some drills. For not knowing what they were supposed to do, the teens did OK.
The following week, the coach showed up. She had some drills planned, but she was the only one there. She was obviously overwhelmed. It was hard for her to keep the kids attention. With 30 minutes left, she decided to let the kids have “free play.” That basically meant that most of the left.
Week 3, the coach texted to say that neither coach could make it again. Andrew decided to stay home that week. We were totally ok with it, too. This led to an email from a league bigwig. “We noticed that only 5 of the 12 players showed up this week. Is there any concerns that you have? Is there something wrong?”
He opened up a can of worms. I wrote him a scathing e-mail back. I told him about the communication and the things that were never explained properly. I complained that we had to buy a uniform, when we were told that Andrew’s age group was going to be given a T-shirt to play in. I complained about the coach and the fact that there was no plan whatsoever for what was happening each week. I expressed my disappointment with the league and the poor planning and communication.
I never got an email back. However, the team got a new coach. He was texting us early in the week and keeping us abreast of what was in store. It was night and day when we got there last week. This coach was GOOD. He kept the kids engaged for the whole time. They had a blast. He even encouraged siblings to come and play, too, which Ella loved!
After those first couple weeks, Andrew kept saying that he didn’t want to go to soccer. He really was hating it. The new coach was supportive, and encouraging to every kid on the team. Andrew loved being able to help him and all of a sudden, he is loving soccer. Go figure.
Sign Here
School has been the absolute best thing for Ella. She comes home with stories every day. She talks about her friends and what they did at school. She tells us who the day’s “helper” was and what everyone wore to school that day.
They have her working on writing her name. She’s getting pretty good at it. First name now and last name next week. I love seeing how hard she is working …
As I got in the car to head to work today, Sam stopped me. She handed me a rolled up piece of paper. Ella had painted a picture at school. She wanted Sam to give it to me to put up at work. I don’t have my own office. I share the tech room with the rest of the staff. A beautiful work of art like this should be shared, so I put it on the bulletin board!
90% Done
I posted recently about finally being able to stain my deck. This week I stained the posts white. It looks great. I really thought I was done, but noticed in this photo that blue under the wood. I think I am going to stain that white, too. Very happy with the way it looks.
Winning!
It’s been nice to have some winning teams in Michigan lately. Monday night, my Detroit Lions wowed folks on Monday Night Football. I love the new black uniforms.
The last time the Lions beat the Seahawks was back in 2012! They had lost the last six games they played against them and that worried some folks. There was no need to worry, as Jared Goff had a stellar (and perfect) day! It was a record day for him, completing all 18 of his passes for 292 yards and two touchdowns.
Before Monday, only six players in NFL history have finished a game with a 100% completion rate with at least eight attempts. Goff is the first QB to finish perfect with more than 10 attempts and first to do it with over 200 yards.
What was even cooler was that Goff caught a 7-yard touchdown pass from Amon-Ra St. Brown on an end-around pass. Goff said that the pay has been in the play book for awhile, but they never seemed to have the right time to use it.
The Detroit Tigers surprised every one over the past few weeks. Back on August 11, they Tigers were 55-63 and 10 games out of a play off spot. Their chance of making the playoffs was 0.2%!!! When they clinched a Wild Card spot, Tiger’s announcer, Jason Benetti, had the perfect thing to say:
“A city that doesn’t care about the odds has a baseball team to match.”
In the Wildcard Playoffs, they faced the 2nd hottest team in the American League – The Houston Astros. Since August 11, the Detroit Tigers are 33-13! Yesterday, they swept the Astros and will face Cleveland in the American League Divisional Series! Game 1 is Saturday!
Once again, I am forever grateful for the handyman skills of my father-in-law. Whenever there is some sort of project that Sam (or I) want to do, he is able to see the finished product in his head. Nothing is impossible and even though there always seems to be a hiccup or two, the project always turns out fantastic.
Recently, we decided to lay down new deck boards on our side porch. We also put up new columns, as the old ones were dry rotted. It’s been a project, but the hard part is finally complete. I know I have shared some of the before pictures….
The missing post in the above picture is what led to the rest.
Then we had issues with the boards. Ours had no groove in the middle, so we had to make adjustments.
New posts went up first and some of the deck board, but there was much more to do.
The above is where we left off a week or so ago. These boards, while not in the best shape, were going to take some work to get up. Despite having some minor surgery earlier in the week, and me telling him we could wait another week, my father-in-law said he was coming over Sunday to work on the porch.
So, on Sunday morning, I brought out all of the tools we needed for the day. I had the air compressor, nail gun, impact drill, hammers, pry bars, table saws, jigsaws, miter saws, and another bag of various tools ready to go. He was there at 10am sharp and we got right to work.
The first thing we did was start laying boards where we left off. We worked right up to where the post was and then ripped the rest of the old boards out. Around the posts we had to cut notches so the boards would fit. We did some creative cuts when we got to the end and against the house. Then we had to go to the other end and finish a couple boards there.
Once the deck boards all down and in place, my father in law took some excess wood and made some decorative boots for around the tops and bottoms of the posts. I learned that my table saw can be adjusted to cut at a 45 degree angle! Who knew!?
I thought the boots looked very cool on the posts.
All I need to do now is paint the posts and figure out whether or not to stain or paint the deck boards. The finished product…
It was a long day. I spent a lot of time bending over and on my knees. My back and knees are a bit sore today. It was worth it … and the countless ibuprofen pills I have been popping all day!
My father-in-law and I are a far cry from Al Borland and Tim “the Tool Man” Taylor. As I have stated before, he is brilliant when it comes to home improvement projects. Any time we have run into a snag, he’s always been able to find the right solution.
A few days ago, I posted about the deck project. If you missed it, you can read that post here:
He came over Saturday afternoon and we got the remaining two posts up. Afterward, we had to trek off to Menards to get the rest of the deck boards. They still have our street tore up and Sam wasn’t sure he’d be able to get his trailer down the road, so he didn’t bring it with him. Instead, we took his truck to get our supplies.
He is always thinking ahead. Knowing that the deck boards were 12 feet long, he packed a battery operated circular saw. Once we got all the boards, we found a spot in the back of the parking lot and began cutting them in half so we could put them in the back of the truck.
Once we got back home, we began to lay the deck boards. For some reason, some of the tongues were not fitting into the grooves. They should just fit together like a puzzle piece.
We needed 45 deck boards. We went through and picked the best looking ones out of the ones they had there. Some were a little darker than the others, some seemed a little thinner than the others, but they are all the same part number.
When we start laying them in, some really had to be forced together. We were tapping them in with a 2×4 and a sledge hammer in order to get them to snap together. Some of the boards may have been bowed a bit, too. It was a lot more challenging than we expected. We did make headway, though.
We’re about half way there.
My father-in-law plans to put the remaining ones on and then trim the ends. He says it will be easy, and I trust him. He is having some surgery this week which will slow him down. He was talking about coming over this weekend to finish, but I told him there was no hurry. Sam and I were more worried about getting the support posts up. There are still boards leading to the door, so we can wait a little while.
I may attempt to lay a couple down, but I’m not sure I want to try without him there. I’m so grateful for his help on this!
So, my father-in-law and I are working on yet another project. This one, however, was not a planned project. And as per usual, once we started it, we found that we’ll be doing more than expected.
This time it is our side porch. Forgive the photo, but the only one I could find was one I took once the Christmas lights were up.
The above picture will serve as a “Before” picture, as I didn’t really take one.
So here is what happened. Sam and I have been discussing getting rid of the railing and just keeping the posts for some time. One day she was sitting on her bench rocker and I leaned over the railing and it broke away from the post. That wasn’t such a big deal because the railing was going away.
However, when the second post from the left in the above picture broke away from the porch itself, we knew we had a problem. It seems that the bottom of the post and the deck boards were dry rotting. With that little incident, I called my father-in-law.
We began to look at each of the posts and saw that some of the others had done the same thing. One of them, in all honesty, we can’t even believe that the roof hadn’t come down! We decided that were were going to do some wider posts and just fix the bad boards. But, as I have stated, nothing ever goes that smoothly for us.
Once we got rid of the railings, we went to work on the posts. The bad news was that they only had a few of the decking boards we needed. That was when my father-in-law suggested that we could probably get away with just replacing the bad boards and stain/paint the deck. We ripped out the bad boards and laid the new boards and ran into another issue.
The old boards are double boards (in the orange square). They have a groove down the middle (green arrow). The only deck boards we could get were single boards (in the blue square) and when you put them together, there is no groove. This led to about a one inch gap (circled in yellow). So it became obvious that we now will end up ripping up all of the old deck board and replace with new ones – at about 15 bucks a board!
With daylight fading, we were able to lay down the remaining deck board and we got up three of the five posts.
In all honesty, despite the work and cost involved, I think the deck is going to look really good. My father-in-law and I were talking and I can see a grey paint or dark stain for the deck itself and white paint for the posts. I am excited to see how this all turns out. I’ve got my fingers crossed that we run into no more issues ….
I’m hoping this is the last big project for quite awhile!
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 