Deck's done...

Other than making a few steps (which I might do tomorrow), the deck is finished!

I put the roof on it today.  Grace and I picked up some smoke tinted panels at Lowes on Wednesday night.  (It was quite an adventure securing those twelve foot panels to the top of the van and then driving home....  Thankfully, it wasn't a windy evening.)  

When we got up this morning it looked like rain.  The weatherman promised buckets full of rain too.   I was all ready to see how many panels I could get up before the rain hit when I noticed that we hadn't bought any fasteners... I had to go to Nooksack Valley Building Center to get screws.  By 8:30, I was up on my ladder and roofing like there was no tomorrow.  I kept thinking, "This will be the last panel before the rain hits..." and then I'd do another panel.   By 11 o'clock I ran out of screws (the project was a little more "screw intensive" than I had figured...)  I went back to NVBC to get screws, found my screws, realized that I didn't have my wallet with me...  stopped at the middle school to leave a note for Grace to go to NVBC in order to pay for the screws... and then, back up my ladder...

By the afternoon, the weather had actually cleared up.  I didn't know how good I had it with the cloudiness and the cool temperatures...  The wind started to pick up a bit and it made handling the panels a little tricky.   I was just starting the last one (which I really couldn't have done by myself) when Grace came home.  We got the last panel up (I actually had to make one more "screw run" to Valley Plumbing - for four screws!) and suddenly, we were done.

And, this is what it looks like:

Funny story:  Norman, who you see in the picture, always insists on being underfoot when we work outside.  Three times, I stepped on him as I came down the ladder.  Once, he was all sprawled out under my ladder when the ladder buckled and fell on him.  As I was hanging from the rafters, trying to figure out how to drop down without hitting the collapsed ladder, Norman looks up at me and proceeds to lay down directly underneath me...  I got down without squashing Norman.

Deck update

We're back!

We finally got a stretch of half decent weather that coincided with a weekend so we could work on the deck.  We weren't really expecting to since the weatherman promised us lousy weather but when we woke up this morning it was gorgeous.  Grace went to Lynden and rented a belt sander and then I sanded... and sanded... and sanded...  
Sanding was pretty horrible.  The picture shows me sanding where I could at least stand up. Once I moved closer to the house I had to crawl around.  Every now and again, I wouldn't pay attention and suddenly the sander would take off on me....

When the sanding portion of the job was done we were ready to apply the stain (which Grace also picked up this morning.)  We were very pleased with the results.  Here's a before and after picture.

Before

After

(note the high security string for keeping Norman off the deck - 

it worked as long as we were there to yell at him...)

Next week we hope to put the roof on and then we hope for just a few nice days so that we can enjoy our deck a bit this year yet...

Deck and gosling update...

Since the pictures uploaded in this order we will deal with matters pertaining to goslings first...

The picture below shows the size of our goslings as of Sunday, July 25... We managed to grab them since they had found a way out of their pasture but neither Woody nor Hovander had (yet). As soon as Paige and I corralled their off-spring the incredibly upset parents were well on their way to breaking down the fence to kill us.

But I digress.... As you can see they have grown quite a bit since the last pictures that I posted. They are in the goose equivalent of their "awkward adolescent years". No feathers, just furry pseudo-feathers. They don't honk, just peep. In the poop department though they seem pretty grown up... The whole family still gets out on a regular basis so our yard and driveway are a mess.

Below you can see our deck progress to date... I am "on vacation" this week and so I have lots of time to devote to the project. Grace, on the other hand, is teaching summer school and so she can only help in the afternoons and evenings. It's going well and we should have the bulk of it done by the end of the weekend. (The picture also shows the window I replaced a few weeks ago...)

Deck progress and goose family update

The new deck is coming right along. We spent our weekend digging holes for footings, setting our footings/deck blocks and then pouring cement for the piers that will support the deck. This is a picture of our progress to date.
On the goose front, things seem to be going well too. Woody and Hovander continue to be stellar, over-protective parents. (I pity any creature that decides to mess with their family...) They got out of their pasture yesterday and I managed to get close enough to take a family portrait. (Hovander's on the left; Woody's on the right; goslings are wedged between mom and dad.)

woody, hovander and the kids...

On Wednesday we were surprised to find that Hovander, a goose that we've had for almost 15 years, hatched out a couple of goslings. She had been sitting on eggs for a number of weeks. She does this every year. If it's not eggs, its anything remotely roundish that she can find to sit on. Last year we found a gander and put them in a pen together. It certainly wasn't love at first sight - as a matter of fact, it seemed like they hated each other with passions that only geese can evoke... but apparently they got along better than we realized...

Hovander had made her nest in a corner of the barn. There was a pile of straw and some feathers but no food source of any kind. We didn't really know what to do about getting those little ones some food especially since Hovander would hiss like a demon and charge at us with outstretched wings if we came within 10 feet of her goslings.

This morning I went to the barn and she was by the sliding door with her babies. I left the door open and she wandered out. She attacked our overly amorous drake and hissed like mad at Norman but once everyone learned to stay away from the little flock it was OK. Eventually she stood in front of Woody's pen (he's the father) and called to him. He came and stood by the gate and once the coast was somewhat clear, Sara opened the gate, ran for her life and this is what we witnessed....



Woody had never seen his offspring before and we didn't know what to expect. Initially it looks like Woody is just happy to be out of his pasture and is thinking of going out with the boys. But Hovander calls him back and seems to tell him that it's his turn to watch the kids for a while. He watched them as closely as Hovander did and she had a few minutes to go for a swim in the big puddle on the driveway. It was pretty amazing to watch the instinctual parenting skills of those two birds - people could learn a lot from a couple of geese...

Why we took the deck off (needlessly...)

One of the main reasons we decided it was time to do something about our back deck was because we discovered that we had a leak in our main water supply line to the house. The line ran right under the deck and we figured it would be a lot easier to dig it up if the deck weren't in the way. Well, as you know, last week we tore the deck off and so all that remained to be done in terms of preparation for rebuilding the deck was replacing the water line. Jesse had done some major preliminary digging last weekend and yesterday I got down to business.

Right off the bat I made a major discovery. After digging just a little bit more I found out that our problem was not the line itself but a coupling in the line. I figured that it would be a simple matter of splicing a chunk of 3/4 inch water line on to the existing line. Then I found out that the splice I needed to replace was directly under the 4 inch black ABS line that whisked sewage from the suite to wherever that stuff ends up. I went to the hardware store, got the parts I needed and got to work. I had to dig it out a little more in order to get the room I needed to finagle everything in. After digging, I found out that I didn't need the parts that I had picked up. It turns out I needed a "T" since whoever installed the sewage line figured that they would save time and labor by running the supply line to the suite directly under the 4 inch transport line. Back to the hardware store... Then the old "T" broke off in the pipe.... Grrr! Did I mention that I had to do a lot of this in the rain? I did. It took me all day but I got it done.

So in the end, it was pretty much unnecessary for us to tear off the back deck.... Now, of course, we have to do something back there. At least the water feature in the backyard is gone. Our ducks don't like that but we do.

This is how I spent my Friday.

This is what I looked like when I was done.

(You can tell everything worked because I'm smiling...)

progress report...

We had a long day today. Thankfully Jesse and Yuseph helped out. The weather was perfect - too lousy to do anything fun but not lousy enough to keep us from working.... I'm tired and dirty so I'll let the pictures tell the story.
This is the part where I broke a window. I didn't break it with the wrecking bar; I broke it with my shoulder. It's a long story...

This is the part where Jesse almost got crushed by the roof of the deck falling down. Yuseph is propping up his section but something slipped. It's a long story...

OK, this is the part where we almost destroyed the suite. We finally got the roof to fall in the right direction (at first) and then it snagged on something, changed trajectories and grazed the storm door of the suite on its way down. (Thankfully this blog doesn't have a soundtrack...)
It's a long story...

And this is what everything looks like right now. We've made some progress; we've still got Monday.