The Big Red Deck

It's that time of the year again. The time that we dread almost as much as the annual spreading of the mulch. Deck maintenance time. Sometimes, we can get by with a power wash and touch up. Last year, we painted all the railings. Unfortunately, the sun did a number on the deck this summer and it needed painted. All 1000 square feet of it. The painting is not so bad, it's the prep that will kill you. We likened it to childbirth.

First, the anticipation. You know you have to go through the birth. It's going to hurt and people will cuss. But you also have an ideal of how easy it will be and the problems that other people have will never happen to you because you are so well prepared, and in our case, have been through it a couple of times before.

It even starts out as a family affair. It's cute to have the kids involved in something that will drastically (??) change their lives.

But then the heavy contractions start and you know what is coming. In our case, the heavy contractions were renting a floor sander and sanding the entire surface. It went ok with the exception of hitting a couple of screw heads and ripping the sand paper on the sander.

Just when you think the end is in sight, the Labor stalls. Or in this case, the Labor increases. After we sanded the deck, Jim power washed it which loosened up a bunch more paint. The only way to really get rid of it was to scrape the deck on our hands and knees with wire brushes. It wasn't too bad, it was only 93 degrees in the direct sun. Yuck. I think I would have rather went through childbirth again.

During this time we all but completely ignored the children. We let them take some pictures of us working.

Evie kept us hydrated with water bottles and we listened to some rocking good music on the Ipod to keep our spirits up. Again, kind of like having a baby. In this picture, Jim is standing around while I do the work. Definitely like having a baby.

And finally, the "pushing" of the roller begins. All the hard work and anticipation leads up to this.

I believe I wore this same expression while giving birth to our daughters.

And a red deck is born. Unlike a baby though, we shut the door to the deck and will be ignoring it from now on. And we don't have to pay for college or get up 5 times a night. We are taking suggestions for a name of our newest baby. We will be having a Red Deck Naming party on Sept 18th in the afternoon. Stop by if you are around and place your vote on the names.