The Deck: Continued...

So, my friend Matt the contractor came by, very generously, and had another look at the deck and at the rot I found under the sliding door. And he said, "You know what you need? You need me here for, like, half a day." Which is exactly what I deeply, deeply hoped he would say.

Pretty much word for word, too - his being there means things will be done correctly; half a day means that it isn't going to cost me an exorbitant amount. He dropped off a hammer (though I do own one), a cat's paw - which looks like this - for pulling nails, and a saws-all, which looks like this. And he told me to remove all the joists and the ledgers, but to leave the rim joists, which form the outer edges of the deck framing, standing.

And I am proud to say that I have almost accomplished it. I will say that the sawzall is about the baddest piece of equipment I've ever run - it thrums with an electric might that is astonishing, and slices through wood and metal like a slow-motion light saber. I felt very manly indeed in the hot sun, shirtless, soaked in sweat, blasting a slice through a 2x10 with that machine-gun-like piece of testosterone candy. Must have put on quite a show for our retired neighbors.

Which is another thing - I've lately been getting more and more cheesed off at the fact that, out of the seven houses that could be said to directly or diagonally abut our own, five belong to retired couples. And those of you who know our street will know: It is a perfect - PERFECT! - street for kids. Little traffic, level for the most part, back yards that are fun to cross through...Perfect.* And we're stuck with codgers everywhere. Now, I like codgers, but I would also like to see a crowd of kids on bicycles swarming past of a summer evening. All I see are my own two. Who are about as cute as a person can get (I refer you to this video), but I think the quality of their lives would go up substantially if they had buddies living nearby. And these folks living around us pretty much only interact with us to complain that Q is bouncing his basketball at 8:00 AM.

Or to accuse them of climbing over the fence separating our yard from theirs and smashing their glass-top deck table, only to have it pointed out to them that during the weekend, when they were away, there was an enormous wind storm, which would explain not only the numerous branches lying about their yard, but the fact that the enormous parasol that ordinarily stands inserted vertically in their deck table, lying forty feet away, and open, against their opposite fence, just might have been the true culprit and not our then-four-year-old-and-two-year-old children.

But I digress. For some reason, the joist hangers - which look like this - on the outer rim joist are a complete b___h to pull out. (That word back there is "bitch".) Perhaps something to do with the boards they're nailed into not being rotten. So around 5:30 this afternoon I called it quits, and will resume nail-pullin' in the morning. I have until Thursday AM - Matt's coming by then to raise holy hell with the deck.

Apparently we've got to replace the sill underneath the sliding door, which is something Matt says he can do with just the two of us and no giant jacks to lift the house up, or even a diminutive green Jedi Master to lift the house into the air so we can insert the new wood. Matt must know what he's doing.

So that's going on...And the dog drama. A litter of pups upstate in NY is adoptable, but sick, so they keep putting off the date when we could come see them. And in the meantime I've fallen for, and applied for, a pup that's currently in Georgia, and can be adopted (sight-unseen, which is a little (but only a veeery little) worrysome) and delivered to the area via a modified horse trailer that regularly makes the trek to bring dogs from the overcrowded "shelters" of the benighted South up to the nearly-stray-free New England States for adoption. Lots of people in town here have done the same, and been very pleased with it. As it stands, I'm not sure what will happen first: Confirmation of the adoption of the very nearly perfect pup from the South, or a trip to see the suddenly-healthy pups up North. It's a race. Both sets of wheels are turning. I will keep you posted.

But I'm thinking a very simple railing for the deck, and right now I'm leaning toward using pressure-treated wood for the decking itself. Cheaper by far than the composite stuff, and it should last a loooong time, given the perfect - PERFECT! - state of all the pressure-treated stuff that was holding up the deck. I mean, some of the joists were double - they had sistered a new pressure-treated joist alongside the original, non-pressure-treated joists. And the originals are gone. Dust. Nothing there but rusty nails that mark where they once hung. But the pressure-treated stuff looks like it was put in yesterday. So it's not like it would be rotting away soon - and splintering and such can be avoided with some basic maintenance. And we're not feeling quite so flush with money these days.

Not that we ever were, but our stretch of my handing Janneke a ton of money I don't need at the end of each month and our savings growing by leaps and bounds has been interrupted lately. Got something fixed on the Subaru, got an appointment to have the brakes on the Prius looked at on Monday, gettin' a dog...Things pile up.

OK, I've probably worked through the insomnia by now. Off to take another crack at dreamland. Hasta la pasta -

Jose



*And for any lurkers who read this and like the looks of our kids, or our neighborhood: Have I talked on the blog about the many guns I have in the house? And my extensive experience in their use? And the fact that I am a fairly intimidating former wrestler, former rugby player, and generally bad-tempered sort who lifts weights and bites through chainsaw blades in my spare time?