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Shine Your Light

/ Outdoor & Gardening

The Trees, The Rot, and Our Poor, Pathetic Deck

Since moving to our current house two years ago we’ve spent the majority of our renovating budget on the exterior. When we bought the house our lot was heavily treed. This was the view from the road.
From the deck all that could be seen of the backyard were thick trees on one side and a fenced-in dog pen on the other (with more trees in there!)
While we loved all the dappled shade from mature and majestic trees, many of them were so close to the house that they were causing rot, plus we wanted to actually use our back yard. We took down over 30 trees, leveled the yard with mountains of loam and created a usable space for the kids that still is surrounded by trees and offers us lots of privacy.
We love all the open space!!
However, after all our hard work in the yard, one of the biggest eyesores of our exterior still remained:  our deck. Our woeful, neglected, trashed, pathetic old deck.

This summer I started scraping the deck in order to refinish it, and discovered more rot than we had imagined. Between the sap from the pine trees,  shade that didn’t allow rain water to dry efficiently, and termites that made their way from the trees onto the deck, there was a lot of damage. (You can see the damage from the trees on the roof of the house above.)

We considered replacing the whole deck but our builder Ron, who finished our basement last winter, checked it out and discovered that hidden under layers and layers of chipping, filthy paint is actually mahogany decking and that a lot of the deck structure was salvageable (woo hoo!!) 

We thought we’d be able to fix the deck ourselves and then re-stain it, but then Mark got a new job and I wimped out on tackling this project solo. With a snowy winter approaching, we want to prevent the deck from rotting any further (and truthfully, cannot stand to look at it anymore!). Yesterday Ron ripped out the rotted wood in no time flat and just like that, our eyesore of a deck is about to get all spiffied up.

This hideous crawlspace under the deck is going to get prettied up with a deck skirt (did you know that’s what a covering on the lower portion of a deck is called? Me neither.)

The deck skirt will be made out of this heavy square latticeboard that is framed out, and hung on hinges so we can store items like the wheelbarrel under the deck.

Ever since I showed Mark this beautiful outdoor space that Pam shared, we have been chomping at the bit to get our deck repaired and beautified! Have you seen it??? It’s dreamy.

Tomorrow I’ll show you the plan we’ve come up with {that I am absolutely dying over} to add some desperately needed curb appeal to the front of our house! We have been envisioning some of these changes since the very first time we looked at this house and it’s so exciting to finally bring the vision to life.

Oh wait – before you go – I have a living room sneak peek for you!

Have a wonderful day lovelies!

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Comments

  1. Privet and Holly says

    Your house and yard
    are both so pretty, I'm
    sure you will choose a
    deck plan that will make
    it sing : ) What a busy
    little bee you have been ~
    I'm looking forward to
    seeing what you are up
    to with this chair….

    Happy Tuesday,
    xo Suzanne

    Reply

  3. pam {simple details} says

    What a beautiful setting, I'm picturing it with all the leaves changing! How exciting that you get to spiff up the space, can't wait to see your plan! Thanks for the shout out, my neighbor will be thrilled their deck was inspiring! 🙂

    Reply

  6. Dana Frieling says

    I like your skirt! Who knew? 😉 It always feels good to start a project that's been bugging you. I hope it goes smoothly, Lisa.

    Reply

  9. [email protected] says

    Ooh I can't wait to hear more about this plan! I love outdoor plans! I just wish,

    1. they didn't cost so much
    2. They were a huge pain to actually get done (why, WHY??)

    I have big plans for our backyard, too. I just don't want to do them.

    Reply

  10. Jenny says

    I can't wait to see how it comes together! You have such a gorgeous outdoor space, a deck update is in order! 🙂 It's so funny that you're posting about this now, because we have someone coming out today to powerwash and spiffy up our deck as well!

    Reply

  11. Lisa - A Room with A View says

    You have beautiful property to do so much with. I like the idea of a deck skirt – never heard it called that. It is amazing how much work a house requires on the outside, too – something some of us neglect/do not have time to tackle because we are so busy with the inside.

    Reply