We framed… we sawed… we hammered… We doubled the size of our backyard deck by ourselves and managed to stay married in the process. Behold, the Patrick and Stacy World Headquarters Backyard Deck:
Small, Petite, Decent but Workable Before:

Amazing, Awesome, Incredible and Humongous After:

Go ahead and admit it, you can’t wait for Mardi Gras 2010 to trip the light fantastic on that dance floor – and no, we do not contract ourselves out. Mom already asked. And yes, I realize we said we weren’t going to spend a lot of money on our fur-cation, so you’ll be happy to know that we paid for half our materials with the coins I rolled from our change jar ($450) – though we had to take it to four different banks to get it converted to paper. Now that’s what I call recessionary economics.
You can read more about this adventure, see pictures of Stacy using an actual saw and not amputating any of her own limbs, plus learn how to persuade your wife to help you build a deck… all after the jump.

I was a bit skeptical (as was Pat) that this little undertaking could take a toll on our relationship. I’m not the most coordinated person in the world, and I don’t take instruction well (OK, I’m a mule), and really, who wants to spend her Spring Break being told “you’re not doing it right” by her husband while undertaking back-breaking manual labor on his behalf at his behest? In fact, who wants to spend his fur-cation patiently instructing said wife in the ways of using a screwdriver without impaling her own eyeball or finding himself sleeping on the couch? Good times… good times.
But we had a week to kill and we’d been talking about expanding our deck for a while (its puny square-footage was painfully revealed at Mardi Gras 2009), and really, there’s only so much you can do with a box of Peeps and a glue gun. So with Pat’s painstakingly drawn plans in hand (and seriously, this guy missed his calling as an engineer), off we went to our nearest home improvement store to order 46 sticks of lumber, two boxes of nails, three 5-pound boxes of deck screws (fancy, they don’t tell you how many screws per box, only the weight of the box – in grams – which calculates to 625 screws per box after you get home and weigh an actual screw on your food scale. Just sayin’), 30 joist hangers and six 80-pound bags of Quikrete. And yes, an 80-pound bag of Quikrete weighs about 400 pounds.
On Saturday, we shoveled about 3,000 pounds of gravel to level out our work surface. Then we dug six 1-foot post-holes which is a lot like pounding concrete with a pickaxe for about three hours… per hole. Then we sunk the posts which involves Pat holding bags of Quikrete over said holes while I douse him with water, and then I got to use the handsaw to level the posts – careful… careful… Stacy saws
Here is the fruit of our first day of slaving labor:

Here is how you do not want to wake up on a Sunday morning: Lumber delivery!
So on Sunday, we got to move all of that lumber from the front drive into the backyard… and we weren’t even hammering yet. But I was yammering… oh, yes… yes I was. For example, why on God’s green earth did we think it was a good idea to plant a prickly pear right next to our deck? I ask this as one who just stopped typing to pull yet another phantom thorn out of my right shoulder, lo these five days later. Oh, and did I mention that my left pec cramped and bicep spasmed as I was attempting this self-surgery? Good times… good times.
Still, Pat soldiered on… though I think it was the protective ear plugs he uses with the circular saw. His ingenious plan was to extend the existing 4×6 beams to the block wall on the south and the view fence on the west, increasing the overall size of the deck from 8×12 feet to 12×16 feet. We would then pull up the existing decking (DEMOLITION IS FUN!) and lay down the 16-footers on top of the new frame.
Here’s Stacy jousting with a joist hanger…

I actually managed to hang all of my joist hangers so that the joists were flush with the frame. I had an excellent teacher: Pat would show me how to do a task. I would do one. He would check my work, make suggestions or offer praise and turn me loose to finish my task. Then he would finish twice as many as I had in the same amount of time. If you’ve read any of my previous blog entries, you know that “slow and steady” are the words I live by – whether I’m trying to or not – and my unofficial mantra mattered most with the joist hangers because in his haste with the 24-ounce Vaughan hammer, Pat hung his joist hangers too high and he had to go back and redo eight of the 21 that he hung. I only completed nine… but I did them perfectly. (So I left to go play cards.)
Onward to Monday, where we got to do some serious screwing…

Yeah, I know what you were thinking… we screwed 650 screws into that deck – and this after my back started to spasm and I began eating Aleve like Smarties. Our dogs were absolutely no help at all, though they did supervise the jobsite in a professional manner – and they managed not to poop in the work area.

And truly, at this interval was where I really had to pause and admire my husband’s genius: We wanted the deck to finish flush with the view fence so the dogs could have some lovely unobstructed views of passing neighbors without the risk of their precious paws slipping between a crack. (It makes for better barking.) Here’s how smart Pat is, as he screws the final board into place…

I will allow Roy a moment to genuflect… and no, Mom, we’re not going to extend your deck next time we’re in Shreveport… I don’t care if it’s Mother’s Day. That’s what Daddy’s for.
Actually it is what Daddy’s for – because in all of this, I realized that I pretty much married my Dad, which I think is the best compliment a daughter could ever give a man. When I was a kid, my father built a huge view deck off the second story of our house. He put up a privacy fence and a gate and put a nice trellis over our pool deck. He even asked my sister and me to put our handprints in the concrete. Building our new-and-improved deck, my husband and I uncovered where Pat had signed and dated the original deck he built with our friend Paul – Had it really been 10 years? So we initialed our Quikrete and signed the new deck. Sentimental. Sweet. Nostalgic – just like my Dad. Also, like my Dad, my husband is patient… incredibly patient… with his mulish girl and he’s a helluva teacher and engineer (if only he could help me with my calculus problems). I married a man who believes in a job well done, loves to solve problems and enjoys the process of work.
And if you want to know how you can persuade your wife to help you build a deck as pretty as ours… well, re-read how we started Monday. Enjoy!