August 1
[ Taken July 31, 2009 | Sunflower | Dayton, OH ]
John and I have been tearing up the back deck (started last weekend) so that we can replace it. (Because a weekend without a home-improvement project is like a day without sunshine.)
It started out as a simple repair job. We were just going to pull out and replace the floorboards since there were a number of them that would ‘give’ rather alarmingly underfoot and we were concerned that some of them had started to rot out. We were also going to replace the lattice-work along the bottom of the deck because, frankly, it just never looked that good. It started out as something that would be a bit time-consuming, but pretty easy.
Then we started to pull up the boards.
The people who used to live here liked to DIY stuff. And they really weren’t good at DIY. Frankly, they SUCKED at it. (We have had to “fix” a lot of their little DIY projects.)
A refrain for the deck work has been “What the hell was that idiot (meaning the guy we bought the house from) thinking?!”
The joists for a deck like ours should be set 16 inches apart. These were 24 inches apart. (No wonder the floorboards felt so squishy.) They were not straight. They sort of wandered all over the place, and some of them were only partially supported – they just sort of ended and hung out into space. The posts weren’t sunk into concrete, or even just sunk into the ground. They were resting on the ground. Some of them didn’t even hit the ground… they were instead propped up with pieces of brick or just kind of hovered a few inches off of the ground. When the previous owner ran out of bolts to attach the joists to the posts he didn’t go out and get more… he just nailed them together instead. And he couldn’t be bothered to spring the extra $.50 for outdoor nails either. No, he used nylon coated interior nails (no corrosion resistance whatsoever) and interior finishing nails. He didn’t use treated lumber. Structural elements were not in any way structurally sound. I was removing the handrail uprights and an entire section of the deck fell off – it was being held up only by a few rusted out finishing nails in the handrail.
Horrifying.
The deck is (or was, as it is mostly pulled apart now) a piece of shit. I am surprised that it didn’t fall down on its own.
John and I are horrified that we had all of our relatives on it for the rehearsal dinner a couple of months ago. I feel like I was taking unnecessary risks every time I went out to sit in the sun with a book and a drink.
What started out as a simple repair job has turned into a rip-everything-out-to-the-foundation-and-beyond-and-then-rebuild-the-whole-thing job.
Oye.
But at least it will be rebuilt right.
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How does our garden grow?
Pretty damn well, actually. Yesterday I picked 18 tomatoes and 9 green peppers. Today I picked 21 more tomatoes and an additional 3 green peppers. We have a good number of eggplants that are ripe on the vine.
We have made eggplant parmesan twice so far, and are looking forward to a lot more of it. I am looking for other eggplant recipes to try. (Foodnetwork.com is a great source for recipe ideas.)
We already have a lot of frozen pesto that we made from basil from the garden, and there is going to be a lot more of it.
We have been making (and freezing) marinara sauce to deal with the piles of tomatoes. Tomatoes sliced up with fresh mozerella and a sprinkle of salt are always a good snack. Dinner tonight will be pizza margherita.
There are lots of vegetable stir-fries in our future.
Fresh herbs from the garden have been going into our bread for months.
I am not complaining.
We are already planning on expanding the garden next year. More rosemary. Maybe less basil and oregano. Hot peppers. Zucchini. Butternut squash.
A note to all relatives: expect either home-made pesto or home-made marinara for holiday gifts this year. We are open to suggestions of preference and quantity.
This is a far cry from the infamous “$52 tomato” fiasco of last summer.