Your may have noticed that I went away for most of the summer from this site – not planned originally but necessary in retrospect; typing away on my keyboard had to take second place to other aspects of life such as health, travel and recreation as well as our extensive DIY project.
After years of delaying it, we finally took on our lengthy deck rebuild project. Our 20′ x 14′ walkout deck had fallen into disrepair, becoming too dangerous even for ourselves to venture onto it safely – rails hanging by thread, holes in rotted-through boards, crumbling stairs underfoot, hungry insects nestling under decayed fascia – it was truly disgraceful!
At our previous DIY projects (roof replacement, kitchen remodel, complete re-landscaping and drywalling our garage), this was by far the biggest DIY task we undertook. All but some joists and posts would need to be torn off and completely rebuilt/replaced before starting this endeavor; additionally we had no prior deck-building knowledge or expertise at that point in time.
As if that weren’t difficult enough, after unloading hundreds of materials came another obstacle in the form of:
COVID struck my lungs hard for weeks. To make matters worse, Canada wildfire smoke blanketed our area for days on end – creating poor air quality (not great when living with COVID).
Over the next six weeks, it rained on about half of all days – by far the highest amount I’d seen at this time in Michigan at this time of year. Most days hit 90+ degrees with swamp-like humidity (I found myself changing clothes three times daily!).
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