The Summer Deck Project Begins

After years of neglect, or just lack of consistent maintenance, we decided to replace our back deck.  We got several bids from different companies that varied in price (mostly along skill lines) to do the work, but in the end our friend and neighbor (Taylor) who has the summers off as a teacher offered to do the work and we started moving forward.  We offered to add some labor to the mix and the first task was pulling up the old decking to see what the underlying structure looked like.  Who knew we had a concrete pad under the deck??

We slowly worked across the old deck pulling up boards and removing all of the nails that remained in the support beams.  This turned out to be fairly difficult between the rotting wood and the rusted-out screws holding it all together.  We also wanted to preserve the joists as much as possible because we wanted to reuse them for the new decking.  At least it was nice to be working outside to do a big project.