Please Don't Judge Me... (A.K.A. The Deck)

Well. it's been ten days since D-day and this morning the dumpster left us, packed about as full as we possibly could pack it. We actually finished the yard clean-up on Sunday, after an AMAZINGLY productive weekend. We had a couple of other projects that we wanted to get into the dumpster too, and we managed to get all of it in there. I promised you pictures, both before and after, and I'm delivering.

OK, I'm delivering with fear and trepidation because as you will see, it was bad, bad, bad, and by posting these pics, I'm admitting that we lived with this. What you're seeing is stuff that was ruined when our basement was partially flooded, the old kitchen, some other construction projects, and stuff from the former owner. 

So without further adieu, I give you.... *deep breath* The Deck.

BEFORE

Here is the "before"

Ugh. So awful.

You can see the deck is leaning to one side.

More junk, this was from the bramble patch beside the house.

And more junk. Most of this pile was stuff from flood damage.

More backyard junk from the former people.

Oh, The Horror!!!

DAY ONE

Here is our salvation! This baby holds three tons of crap! Hallelujah!

Isaac and I added a few things Friday evening, it was cold and rainy so we didn't do to much. We did find this though.

That's a rifle that was under the deck. It belonged to the former owners. I know nothing about guns, so I called the police (on the non-911 line) to have them come out and take it. I told the officer that if he came out here, it would be a pellet gun and if he didn't it would be an AK-47. It was a pellet gun. We've found that police officers seem to enjoy non-emergency, non threatening interactions with the public. Both of the officers (the first forgot to mention that the he'd been here so an hour later another officer arrived) were, uh, impressed (?) by the amount of work we had to do. The first guy liked my "To Blave" license plate. Cool.

At the end of the first day, this is what we managed to get into the dumpster. Pathetic.

DAY TWO.

The morning of day two things looked like this:

There are some bare patches where we got some things cleared out.

 No, that is not entrails, that is a braided rug that the former owners threw in the swamp.

 I took some pics from the bathroom window so you can see what I had to look at everyday...

Things are looking a little clearer now...

By our mid morning break we had this much filled:

After lunch, it looked like this:

Here it is the afternoon:

And here are the same views from the bathroom window that afternoon.

Much better!

By the end of the evening we had managed to get the deck partially apart:

Here's the dumpster when we called it a night.

Wow huh?

DAY THREE:

Let's start with some pics of the deck.

Originally we were going to recycle the deck into raised beds for our garden, but after we started taking things down we realized that it was rotten... and also pressure treated so that was out the window.

Over the rest of the day, Hun removed the deck with a sawz-all. He's a big, strong guy :-)

Lucie being a great helper... in her PJ's.

We're almost done now...

And something pretty to end the day. It was over by the foundation and it was spared.

FINI!

The junk is gone... That's the burn pit, it seems to be a regular feature of Central Maine backyards. We're going to be putting fill in that and covering it with grass, because, you know, we don't need a burn pit. We did find a nice bedstead in the burn pit. Yep, classy.

OK, that post is still back there.

 The burn pit again, we put some of the rotten wood without nails in it to start to fill it.

Hun and I shoved those stairs down from the corner of the house to under the back door. Actually, Hun most of the shoving, I just pushed and made grunting sounds so I appeared to be doing something.

There it is! Now it just looks like we have a really destructive dog who likes to dig. On the left, we need to rebuild the bulkhead. We'll be adding a brand new deck, shutters, some fresh paint, and a french door. That's a little ways down the road though. Right now we're going to turn it into lawn and enjoy the lack of junk!

I'm SO GLAD IT'S DONE!!!!! 

We were doing a couple of other projects last week so we could fully take advantage of the dumpster. I'm going to show you the other projects this week.

Phew. That was nerve-wracking but it's out there now... Be kind!!!

See you tomorrow,
H