Deck Building 101

Last week Shannon gave me the go ahead to design and build a deck/patio for our backyard. What fun! We borrowed Papa Joe's truck and trailer on Wednesday and bought the lumber. No time to begin that evening--church and cheesecake baking took up the whole evening. Thursday AM I had bible study at church, so didn't get started until afternoon. Alex and I were able to get the frame built before Shannon got home from work. We began placing the footings and leveling the frame on Friday, which took most of the day. I'm thankful for strong boys to help with the hard parts! I'm not very good at taking before, during and after pictures, but Alex did snap a picture of us. We were able to get about a third of the decking on before dark.

Saturday was taken up with soccer games, and we weren't able to get to work until after 5:00 PM. We got the decking finished and the frame for the benches made. Sunday we started back to work after lunch, but got stopped by the rain before finishing the benches.

Monday morning we were up early and completed the benches, and were able to get the table finished as well. The last project will be making a portable bench to use around the table.
I appreciate all of the help my boys provided. We had fun (at least I did!) working through design challenges.

The beauty of homeschooling is that we can do projects like this when the urge strikes. We did math (measuring, cutting, designing), art (we painted shutters earlier in the week, and anytime something didn't work out exactly as planned, we declared it "art"), physics (construction, leveling), home economics (Jack grilled supper for us Saturday evening, and the kids were in charge of their own snacks), science (played with/dissected a few worms while digging holes), child care (had to take turns watching the littles), plumbing (replaced the kitchen faucet Tuesday), and probably a lot more, but I can't think clearly right now! I'm praying their wives will thank me someday. I'll post "after" pictures some other day. It's rainy and cloudy outside today.

"Prepare your outside work, make it fit for yourself int he field; and afterward build your house." Proverbs 24:27