‘Wood’n’t you know it? – Construction is Hard

It all began early this spring. An innocent Gamer (husband of my Twin) walked around his back porch. Crack! Schlump! Down he goes! Leg breaking right through the wooden planks!

Have no fear, precious fiends. Bruised but undaunted Gamer gets up and covers the cracked plank so that my Twin, dog, and I are sure to go unscathed.

Fast forward another month.

Gamer is once again innocently wandering his porch. Crack! Schlump! Down he goes again!

Deciding that the porch officially has a vendetta, Gamer determines that reconstruction is necessary. Nay, essential to everyone’s continued health and lack of broken limbs. So Gamer and my Twin rent a truck and trailer, load up half a forest worth of wood, and drive it back here.

And that’s where CJ comes in.

Back and forth and back and forth we go. The sun blazes overhead. Humidity bathes us in sweat until we each act as a miniature raincloud to the grass beneath. But can we rest? Absolutely not. The rental truck has a two-hour limit, fiends, and by hell or heat stroke, we will not be subject to late fees!

Once all the wood is piled up construction begins, right? If that’s what you assumed, dear fiend, know that you are WRONG! We cannot begin construction until demolition has occurred!

So the CJ picks up hammer and mallet and goes at it!...very slowly. The screws are not only covered in thick paint, but they’ve rusted just enough to strip the moment the screwdriver looks in their direction. And yet, they’re not rusted enough to simply crumble to dust when we pull up the planks. Each board gives up its deathgrip only after the fiercest of fights.

After many years of being weathered, the planks and support structure gave up the ghost. It was particularly delightful to rub against each board and feel the grime and mold which had accumulated.

To add insult to injury, Sam the German Shepherd is certain everyone in the backyard is facing certain doom without her supervision. The tormented howls as she is kept safely inside do not bear speaking of, dear fiends.

So despite heat, thunderstorms, mosquitos, and clumsy hands, we eventually pry up all the boards on the lower deck. It is then that we discover the reason Gamer had been continuously falling through. Rot. Mold. Mud. Ick. You name it, it was down there.

Can you guess which support structure kept caving in on Gamer? Here’s a clue: its the one literally rotting apart.

Undaunted (okay maybe a little daunted) CJ helped replace old, rotted support beams with new, much heavier ones. Once those were in place, we began slowly adding new floor planks across the top. And that’s when we discovered another problem.

CJ has her own toolbox – battery powered drill included. It’s been with me for years as a college graduation present from my dad. It’s still in good condition, and only within the last year have I needed to replace the battery. Over the years it’s put together furniture, taken apart furniture, drilled holes in walls, and hung numerous shelves and photos. All around a good and reliable tool. However...there’s a difference between an electric screwdriver that does all the above infrequently and one built for heavy duty projects like deck replacement. After about 30 minutes of dedicated screwing (hah), my poor drill sounded like a dying water buffalo and moved just about as quickly. Add in the fact that I only had one battery, and our two workers to a plank soon became one.

Poor Gamer. No sooner did we enter the blazing heat and mosquito habitat then did CJ disappear back inside to charge her tool. Fortunately, heat waves and thunderstorms kept our work slots brief, and CJ had plenty of other things to do such as drag old boards to the pile or track down where the damned drill bit had rolled off to.

Through it all Sam the Unloved, Sam the Forgotten, Sam the-never-to-be-allowed-outside-in-her-beautiful-backyard-again stayed inside and looked at us reproachfully every time we retreated back into the air conditioning.

New, clean support boards are screwed in. Let me tell you, fiends, those boards were heavy. Almost as heavy as Sam’s worry over being left out.

Eventually, the new deck planks began to stretch out from tiny pathways to I-don’t-have-to-think-about-where-I’m-stepping sections. And then, it was finished. Victory, so very far away, was finally ours.

Except it wasn’t.

What do you mean, CJ? You’ve just finished the deck! What’s left but to enjoy it? Unfortunately, there’s this little something called ‘scrap wood’ at the end of a project. This includes not only the odds and ends left over from the new wood but also the acres and acres of old, rotting boards we pulled up during the demolition phase. My Twin, being the dedicated dog mom that she is, refused to let poor Sam into the backyard as long as there were said acres of old boards with rusting screws sticking out of them. Crazy right? But into the fray we fling ourselves once more.

Gamer works the circular saw, cutting the long boards into manageable chunks. Twin and I pretend to be pack mules and ferry them out of the backyard where we stack them into somewhat-but-mostly-not neat piles. Eventually the piles are put in their proper place, and we drag our sweaty, grimy selves onto the porch and admire our hard work. Now we finally have a new porch to use.

And, most importantly, Sam once again has her backyard.

The railings still need to go up, but that’ll be another weekend project. For now we’ll sit outside and enjoy our brand new deck…and the mosquitos.