Deck Finished*

* mostly finished. Still the bits on the lower south side to replace, but the worst is over.

As with most things I do, today took longer than I’d hoped, but in the end nothing went horribly wrong, so that’s got to be a win, right? Tammy and I were at it from 8:30 until 4:00 today, installing the lattice. Last night we put in about an hour and a half staining the remaining parts of the railings and the trim, too.

The kids helped where they could as runners, and at my suggestion, even put a fresh coat of paint on the birdhouses on the back fence.

We started with the easiest panels on the north side. They were rectangles, with just a notch to cut out for the pergola supports. Even so, we found out right away that the lattice sheets weren’t perfectly square. When Miranda and I measured a cutting line on the first one, it was obviously not square and that started us working more by “fitting” instead of “measuring”, because trying to cut square edges on a 4’x8′ sheet of lattice was beyond us.

We had to first attach the outside trim, and then the lattice was installed, and then the inside trim made a sandwich, holding the lattice in place. We were done the north side panels by lunch, but the panels with the “windows” cut out still remained. Those were a bear. Trying to figure out where to cut when you can’t trust the edge to be square was not fun. Tammy and I installed and uninstalled each lattice sheet about four times to ensure that the windows were even and the sides and top were level.

I’m happy with the results, and I hope that the renos will last for a long time before we have to pull it all apart again. We will get to the remaining lattice at some point this summer, but it won’t be tomorrow.