the crappiest deck on the block

We have reached a point in our home ownership where we cannot avoid certain repairs anymore. Our deck was pretty craptastic when we moved in almost 4 years ago. Now it is pretty much disintegrating. Not joking, I am afraid I am going to fall through one of these days. Two of the three rails are falling off, one is held up by the meter box as I mentioned before, and the third has the back completely rotted out. There are splintered pieces of board that the previous owners “fixed” by stapling them back down. There are two sets of stairs. On one side the rail has detached from the deck and on the other side one whole step his missing because it fell off. Other boards throughout the deck bounce and sink when stepped on. SO Like I said, we cant put it off any longer. We NEED to do something about this deck.

I have been playing around with ideas and think the best bet would be to make the raised deck much smaller just to accommodate the two doors (porch and back door) and then try to do a patio deck in the yard to give us a hard surface for chairs to sit outside when we want. It will actually open up the yard a lot because of the layout of plants.

I photographed some of the more awesome attributes.

general deck crappiness the stapled boards

meter box support detaching from porch

So there you have it. Crappiest deck on the block. We are hoping to get it all fixed up and new for around $750. That is without any pricing or anything, just a dream. Hopefully we can achieve it!

One thing that could offset costs is my attempts at selling off some Lilly clothes, maternity clothes, unused baby stuff, and breast pumps. Cedar Rapids has a local consignment sale that you can participate in every spring and fall. I decided to give it a try because I will make more there than at a garage sale on maternity clothes. I figured I should also give some baby clothes a try to see how well they sell and at what prices. this is what I have to sort through…

and that doesn’t include the 20 gallon tub I have in the garage that I forgot about. And just an FYI, they are pretty bog boxes and I am a rock star packer/organizer. The really sad thing.. I am finding that Edison has MORE clothes than Lilly at the younger stages. crap. awesome for the future sale I will have, but CRAP. that is a lot of clothes.