Well, after several weeks of beautiful, if not unseasonably warm, weather, we have a rainy day for the fourth. It doesn’t matter, our fireworks were Sunday. Actually, with the 4th on Wednesday, all the surrounding communities have scheduled their fireworks displays on different nights. Melissa has gone out with her friends to different fireworks shows each night.
But, I’m glad for a quiet, damp day. I’m waiting for a delivery truck from Lowes to show up and wondering if they’ll make it today.
I’m waiting for a load of material for a deck to be delivered. After talking about it for years, I finally decided to go ahead and do it myself. It’s a good thing I’m retired, I’d never have had time while working. I work 3 or 4 hours on it and go take a nap. I’m glad I don’t do this for a living.
Anyway, I have the cars out in the road, the camping trailer in the side yard and the driveway empty, waiting to receive the delivery. I hope it does show up today, because I have everything scheduled around it. Tomorrow, I hope to go rent the post-hole digger to dig the foundations. The rain will help with that project. But I’ll need to keep the concrete mix dry until I use it. I hope they have a covered truck. Friday through Sunday, I have planned to go camping at the Great Blue Heron Music Festival in Chautaqua Co. I don’t want to bump things back a day, because that will mean not digging the holes until at least Monday.
The goal is to have the deck complete by July 21. That’s the date for Melissa’s graduation party. It sure would be nice to have it out on the new deck. That should be doable, if no more delays come along. I think once the posts and supports are in and I get the frame built, it will be easy. I can go and do a few boards at a time any time I want. I plan on using pneumatic nailers, so that will speed things up. It’s nice having a compressor handy.
I also bought a power miter saw. That will make things much easier, especially at corners. Originally, I had wanted to get fancy and put the decking at a 45-degree angle, but when the guy at Lowes pointed out I could save 10-20% by not doing that, I changed my mind.
I’ve been taking photos of the process at each stage. They’re in my Gallery, so of course, you can see them.
Well, I no more finished writing this, when Lowes called to tell us they had fired their old truck driver and would be rescheduling the delivery for Saturday.
I guess the driver wanted the Fourth off.
Work on the deck continues, whether 90 degrees hot or not. We’ve managed to work most mornings on it since I returned from my weekend camping at the Great Blue Heron Festival.
So far, the foundations are in and the ledgers are in place on the two walls. We will start on the support pillars soon.
We rented a power auger and dug the holes with it. Most of the holes were no problem, but two were full of rocks, of course. We managed to finish up just in time to get the tool back under 4 hours and avoid the all-day rate.
Bryan’s friend and our neighbor Nathan has been helping. He’s been a lot of help and is a hard worker.