Delivery or Pick-Up? (Deck Build | Part One)

While I'm waiting for my latest DIY project to dry so that I can hang it up, (hint, hint), I thought I'd share a little of what we did last night.

When I came home from work, I found someone had delivered us some goodies in the form of treated lumber and cement:


We had to laugh, because I don't think the truck driver could have placed it anywhere else that would have effectively made the most amount of our driveway useless.

You'll remember in my last post I talked about the changes we made to the deck design.  We ended up going with the second design and ordered all the materials needed.  Before we started laying out the deck though, something had to go.

Here's a photo of the back of our house for reference:


Yep, our much-used back porch had to go.  And it was time.  That thing saw more action than...(insert joke here, PG or R, I'll let you choose).  It's hard to capture the true state of the porch in photos but I'll try.

First up we have the detached handrail.  You know when you go up a set of stairs too fast and trip a little, but thankfully you can quickly grab onto the handrail and right yourself before hurting something or making a fool of yourself?  Yeah, with this handrail you'd probably continue falling, but also bring the handrail with you.  Not the safest "safety railing" around.  The arrow shows where the steps have rotted out and are no longer attached to the screws of the handrail and kinda wobble back and forth if anyone breaths too hard:


Then we have the Leaning Back Porch of Pisa.  Notice the right side's mean swagger:


Finally, Mike wanted to make sure the overhang was well supported with some 2x6's before he removed the porch so it didn't fall on top of anyone.  But, it turns out the overhang was Superman and has been supporting itself for awhile and could have crushed us at any given moment.  I'll let this highly cinematic video show you what Mike found after removing the handrails and downspout, (sorry I didn't realize I shouldn't rotate the camera when filming, but you get the idea):
 

Yeah, that's the support not connected to the porch, at all.  The wood underneath had completely rotted out.  Little did we know we were putting our own lives at stake every time we walked on the porch.  Yesterday I forgot my keys, then my wallet.  I could have died 5 times yesterday alone!

So after knowing about the death trap we had behind us, it was time to say buh-bye.  At this point I was lucky I got pictures before Mike destroyed it all.  He wouldn't stop so I just clicked away:


Here's the first glimpse of the pretty green color of the original siding.  And by pretty, I mean how awesome would that color look on a ruffled pillow in a shabby chic room?  As the color of my house though?  Hells no!


And when tools don't do the job, just start jumping on it:


Nice.  More outdoor carpeting.


From the kitchen door, watching the porch fly-by:



Mike wearing his lady headband to prevent the sweat from getting in his eyes.  He lost his more manly one and this is what I stuck him with, then took pictures, then posted them on the internet for everyone to see.  Poor guy.


I was kinda disappointed we didn't find anything cool under there, like a dead body or an old treasure.  We did find some weird old glass jars with dried yellow stuff.  Womp womp.


After the clean-up we were left with just a shadow of what was once there.  Literally a shadow, since they painted around it:



And don't worry, I've only opened the back door to walk out just once or twice.  I've since kept the door locked to prevent myself from falling out.

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