A much longed for addition...

Yes, it's been nearly a month again, and once again I've had several posts in mind but have failed to actually type them up.  I'll continue to think about them and might even get some written and posted!

Anyhow, on to the much longed for addition I mentioned in the title.  No, I don't mean Kate this time.  I mean this addition:

Remember when J and I painted our deck and had a miserable time with it?  Well, the following year, when we should have repainted it (apparently once you've made the horrible choice to paint your deck (thanks, PO), you have to do so every year to keep it looking nice), we decided not to.  Quite frankly, I don't remember why.  Maybe because I was in the middle of a career crisis?  Or because the bathroom remodel was too time-consuming?  Whatever the reason, by 2011 we realized that a new deck (one that we wouldn't paint) was needed.  That April, we started sketching ideas and talking about what we had in mind.  Those discussions and sketches continued for months. I had folks out periodically to give us a quote, but I was never happy with the number (or the service, for that matter).

Last fall, when we had the gutters done, I asked the contractor for yet another quote.  We discussed what I had in mind and he said he'd give me a call.  Well, he didn't.  I didn't mind, as we had other things on our minds, but as spring (and the baby) rolled around, we realized that we couldn't put a little one out on the old, splintered deck to learn to crawl and walk.  I started asking around for recommendations and came across Deckadent Designs, a local company who built a deck for some friends of ours.  After nearly two years of waiting, these guys gave me a decent quote and could start quickly.  (By "decent" I mean I completely choked, but acknowledged that in the years of dreaming my plans had grown grander and the quote still came in less than some of our earlier quotes.)

So now, two years after we first discussed rebuilding the deck, we're enjoying this new addition to our home.  The addition prompted J to power wash and seal the fence and me to repaint the entry to the basement.  There are still things to do to the exterior of the house (move/paint/destroy? the storage building and finish the other planting bed out front to name two), but we are feeling pretty good about our progress on the house.

P.S.  I really need to write a complete deck building post, complete with pictures and the obligatory "PO's crazy contributions to the old deck" story.