The Deck: Day 1,2 and 3

The much anticipated weekend has arrived, and we now have a functional deck (with nothing on it)!
It looks great! I love the white cedar deck boards. Any trouble we had to get them is totally worth it -- and our neighbour had to "thank" me today for using it because now his wife wants the same for theirs!

DAY 1:
All day Saturday was spent putting together the main structure of it and griping about the post hole digger and the weather. The post holes were too high off the ground so we had to re-think the plans a little bit because of that, and now we are slightly over the 24" mark that we wanted to be (to avoid having to get a building permit). Hopefully it won't be a problem when the inspector comes around in a few weeks to check on the deck behind us... And it rained on and off all day, was super windy (my BBQ blew over), and was really really cold (I'm talking 5-10 degrees!!)

Anyway, this is what we started with; A few stakes in the ground to match a drawing from the other post to beams and joists, finishing the day with the basic shape of our deck...

Chris "supervising"...

The deck Framed...

Marn and I imagining it being warmer and laying on the finished deck -- getting closer!

It was a long, wet and cold day. I didn't think Dad was going to make it back for "Day 2", the way he was limping around when we left here!

DAY 2:
I didn't think it was possible, but Sunday was colder than Saturday. Brutal!
The day was pretty much spent cutting, placing and screwing down the deck boards. It's amazing how long it took, but after I thought about it, there wasn't one board that DIDN'T need to be measured and cut on both ends. Even though we had lots of help, it took a long time!


Chris and Dave also started on the post holes for the privacy fence along the side of our neighbours house. We initially hired the same post hole digger to do the fence boards at the same time as the deck posts, but they were too close to the neighbours gas line (4 feet) for the auger that day and were told that we had to have them hand dug. After the screw-up on the deck posts, we decided to rent a post-hole digger from Home Depot to do the 4 holes needed for the fence. We all expected it to be a major pain to dig them, but to be honest, it was quite easy to do! The tool only cost $10/day, and Dave and Chris had 3 of them dug 3.5 feet down in less than 1 hour before lunch break. Totally worth it! I might do the rest of them if we finish the rest of the fence this summer with this digger.... totally worth it.
Anyway, once we got in a groove with Dad on his new sliding compound mitre saw (first use this weekend), the deck boards were on and looking great!

Dave and I screwing the boards down. I think shortly after this picture, I knocked the beer down christening the deck before it was even "opened".

Anyway, here it looked (and still looks) after day 2:

Other angles:



Marnie and I a little more comfortable on an actual deck!

Of course when our Friends Carey and Chris are over, it calls for big meals... well I had to take a picture of the BBQ that night because the grill was completely full and it was delicious (Carey's sister and boyfriend were over as well). We need a bigger BBQ to accommodate deck parties!


DAY 3:
I set the fence posts in the holes on Monday with Dave, but we didn't do much more than that. I took a vacation day on Tuesday and need to finish one more post after buying a few more pieces of wood then finish screwing down the deck boards because we started running out about 3/4 the way done on Sunday.... and I might get to the stair stringers, but they could be a little more complicated than I had bargained for.
We still have benches and railings to go as well, so even though it looks nearly done, there's a lot left to do! We also decided to create some big flower beds with the extra dirt from the post holes. Marnie has the week off this week, so maybe I'll get on her to start that out. Anyway, we are going to have a busy and fun and expensive summer, and we're not even going on vacation!

Dog names and deck plans

We are really starting to like "Echo" as a dog name for our Dane puppy. It's starting to catch on and just start to "fit"... even though we haven't seen the dogs yet! Anyway, we're still tossing a few around, and will likely come to a decision in 3 weeks when we go to pick out the puppy.

As for the deck, we're still planning on building this May 24 weekend. The pressure treated wood should be arriving today (or tomorrow) to go along with the Cedar that we picked up last weekend and we had the post holes dug on Tuesday, so everything is going to plan so far. I just hope that I ordered enough wood! It better be enough after totalling all the bills so far... yikes!! We're already 50% over the amount that I wanted to spend. I think the 2x6 cedar decking as well as deciding to build the privacy fence were the culprits, but hopefully it'll be worth it in the end. Dad is coming over either tonight or tomorrow and if the rain ever stops (it's been raining on and off for the past 9 days), we'll start to plan hanging the Ledger board to the house.

We did make a small change to the plans that I posted earlier. We are not building the steps down on the left, and the fence will not have a gate on that side of the house. The extra dirt from the post holes is going towards creating some flower beds in the backyard, and extending the front and side gardens.

We're really looking forward to getting started!

We decided on...

a blue male puppy!
A LOT of discussion and thought went into it, and although we were set on a (blue) female, we decided to go with the Male. We are a little worried we might end up with a huge 200 pounder, but we're happy with the decision. The breeder said after we told her that we will be happy with either, but that it will be a little more work (training) with a male. We knew that before picking, and since we are taking him to puppy school and then "1st grade" obedience classes, as well as our own training, we are confident we'll have a dog as gorgeous as his father, Malakai. Maybe even more well behaved.

Now name picking.... we've been calling our dog maggie for so long now it's hard to think of something new - we're leaning towards "Echo" right now. That could change anytime of course. I'm also liking Gonzo (like the muppets character)!

Puppies

We received the much anticipated phone call from our breeder, Danielle, today about our puppy's birth and the news, although exciting, was a little disappointing. They were born yesterday with 10 of them. There were NO blue female's born. :(

We are REALLY sad about that... I don't know what we're going to do now. We have three options;
1) Choose a black female or black or blue male
2) Wait for the next litter - which is going to be all blue with the same father as this litter, but not born until DECEMBER!
3) One of Danielle's friends is also breeding a sister-dog to hers with Angus who is a huge drooler. They are expecting a litter in 2 months, but no guarantee again for a blue female.

The thing that's killing the decision for me about this is, option #2 above. The mother Chelsea and the same father Malakai are both GORGEOUS dogs. Chelsea had an even better disposition than Madison. BUT December means we would get it in February of 2007. Not great for a few reasons. The weather, it's nearly a year away, bad timing if we want to have kids soon... uuggh!
not as happy a day as we had hoped!

No news yet

We were expecting to get really excited this weekend about our puppy being born, but haven't heard a thing yet. See, it's been 10 weeks now since they started trying to mate her, and a dog pregnancy is 9 weeks. By our calculations from when the breeder called to tell us she was pregnant, we figured she'd be born last week and would be picking her up the first week of July.
*I* think that she's been born and we just haven't heard yet. Imagine trying to keep track of 10-12 great dane puppies? That would be a lot of work and I imagine the breeder is very busy with it all and hasn't had time to sit down and call anxious soon-to-be owners. Especially because she just had another litter with another pair of dogs only a few weeks ago. Can you imagine having over 20 puppies in your house all under 5 weeks old? yikes!

To make things worse (our being anxious to hear), we went on a Danes in Distress dane-a-thon this weekend. There were probably 20-25 Danes on the trails of Langdon Hall in Cambridge. It was a beautiful thing and so fun to participate in - even though we were only 1 of 2 couples walking without a dog!

We might call the breeder this weekend if we haven't heard by then...
We'll keep you posted!

Deck Plans

Well, we are well underway with the deck plans now. We have half the wood ordered (white cedar) for the deck boards, benches and fence, and we'll be ordering the pressure-treated and hardware later this week probably. The deck and fence post holes are being dug and set May 11 in the afternoon, so it's really starting to happen now!
"The Crew" (Dad, Chris and Carey, and Dave) are coming over on the May 24 weekend (20-21st) to help, so we should be up and running with a working deck and fence by the 23rd (probably not fully completed with bench, railings and stairs, though)... We're REALLY looking forward to it. To help with the visualizing, check out the plans. I'll be taking pictures of our yard before the holes go in because very soon it will all look very different!

We are buying the White Cedar from an old order Mennonite near Owen Sound about 1.5 hours away. The pain of it is we have to go and get the wood, but the good is it costs less than the price of pressure-treated in the big-box stores, and we're getting really great decking that we wouldn't be able to get otherwise! The other great thing that we're hoping to do is accent the White Cedar on the deck and fence with Red Cedar from BC. My boss has offered to truck back whatever we order from a BC lumber yard for free if we want to use it. So we are definitely going to do that. We just have to figure out what we need to order. Why from BC? Have you looked at the prices of Red Cedar here in Ontario? Ouch... It's so abundant in BC that it's probably half the cost as here. And shipping it across the country for free is a pretty nice deal. (great perk about the company I work for -- I hope to do the same with Christmas gifts!)

All Star Wifey

Marnie came home this weekend after the National Volleyball Championships in Ancaster, Ontario (Hamilton) and their team finished 3rd place! But the best news was that she was named to the all-star team for the tournament. As a prize, she got a new pair of Bollé sunglasses. nice!
I got to work most of the weekend....

Well that's it for indoor sports until the fall. Volleyball and Basketball are done. But starting next week, Ultimate Frisbee starts for us, and I'm starting 2-on-2 beach volleyball and softball later in the month. I'm looking forward to getting and playing outside again and having the dog and Marnie out to watch! :)