This Old House, Pool Deck Replacement.

This blog does a number of things for me, one of which is my own personal time capsule or library.  When we try to remember when we did something we often turn here.  With that in mind this year we decided to replace our pool deck.

We have our own special FAUX in-ground pool.   It’s an above ground pool built into the side of what was at one point the Summer kitchen for this 1800’s farm house.  From there a deck wraps around it.

It was here when we moved in, and quite frankly needed replaced about two years after we moved in.  In 2009 we had our pool replaced, you can see how bad the deck was in the photos on that post here.

Part of the problem was that the new pool wasn’t put as close to the deck as the old pool, so we had to build up a little extra trim to get by.

In 2010, instead of tearing up and rebuilding the deck we used “Restore” deck paint, which was awesome and got us to where we are today.  That product worked so well we intend to put it on this deck from the start, or next year.

Over the memorial holiday weekend this year (2018) we gutted the deck, rebuilt a bunch of the foundation, and replaced the surrounding fence too.

The fence still needs painted and will be in the fall.

Final results:

Lumber and materials were purchased at Menards, though if I had it to do over again I might try Lowes or HomeDepot.  I ordered online, and they delivered it pretty quickly.  However, I didn’t go pick out the wood and there was a lot of low-quality wood in the decking that got delivered.

 

Ding! Attic’s done. (almost)

Well it didn’t quite take a year, but it seems like it.

We started finishing the attic a while ago. The roof is now completely enclosed, and we cleaned, and cleaned, and painted this weekend. It’s almost ready to move in. This past weekend Claudine too Maria to Vermont to visit relatives. Maggie, Molly, Michael and I attacked the attic ‘trading-spaces’ style.

This was the perfect opportunity. On that show you turn over a room someone who you trust (hopefully). While they are totally changing your room, you have no say in what stays or goes, what they toss, or how things are done. That was the logic behind last weekend. With Claudine out of town, she wouldn’t have any say on what we tossed during the clean out phase or what we painted either.

The photos below don’t do it justice. I didn’t take good photos of all the crap we has stored up there. While we all like the ‘natural’ wood look, the attic isn’t as bright as we wanted, and since we’ll be moving two girls up there, it wasn’t very ‘girly’ either. It turned out really well.

Now we need to tackle the air-conditioning or lack-there-of problem. We’re looking at installing a stand alone PACT unit up there.

More on that later.

Photos:

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Attic progress

In the last month or so we had the opportunity to get our rears up in the attic and working on the ‘project’.

About two weeks ago Michael and I kicked butt and took names for one day and wrapped up the north side (except for the trim). But we did finish the bulk of that side.

Photos in the Original Gallery Here.

So far we’re really happy with the results 😉

Attic Part 2 of ???

Alright, so yea, we started this Attic project back in uhm March/April.

We framed out the supports for the mighty fine pine 4×8 tongue and groove pattern 166 siding.

All summer long something else has been happening, like the barn, or finding a horse, or getting a new motorcycle. Always something!

This weekend I found some time to get up there and make some progress. It’s coming together nicely. No I have no idea yet what I’m going to do with the skylights. 🙁 But I’ll work something out. Having a complete plan is never a prerequisite, nor is it usually possible with this old house. You’re going to run into something any way.

Larger images in the Gallery here.

Yesterday I battled the Paslode. My favorite TOOL in the world. It jammed up and until I broke down and read the directions, was nearly impossible to un-jam. But if you simply follow the directions, it’s a piece of cake. So that’s one jam in about 2000 nails when you consider it was used quite a bit on the barn too.

See: Attic Part 1 off ??? & Progress in the Attic, as well as: Home Depot and Customer Service

With some luck we’ll wrap up the north side in the next couple weeks. (Hey! It’s possible 😉 )

We’re going to come up short on the siding because it sat outside in the driveway too long and even though we had it covered well (or so we thought) a significant portion of the wood is now stained from water damage. However, if we decide to paint it as opposed to stain it we should be alright.

Well, it’s done, sort of…

Let the real fun begin.

Cisco is home as of today.

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Sorry for the poor picture quality, we weren’t thinking ahead, this came off my phone.

But he’s home, and he’s happy and so is Claudine. There’s still lots of work to do including finding a pasture pal or stable mate for Cisco.

But we’ve accomplished what we set out to do this spring.