All Decked Out

Well, now that we have the inside

of our 'hobby house' mostly finished - we just have the 'little' things that you might see when out and about and you just know it is the right item to finish off 'the look', like pillows, pictures etc.

So now we turn our interest to the outside and what better project than to build a deck. Our grounds is so wet - we are the lowest property around so we get all the run off - anyway, it gets a little embarrassing when you sit down on the lawn chair and it sinks a few inches into the turf.

Our first challenge was to decide

how to build the under pinning of the deck. We experienced many, many tree roots when we were trenching for the weeping tile around the house and decided not to fight with mother nature and set the deck on deck blocks. Because the ground is lower near the house than it is near the driveway, we had to dig some turf out to make it level – don't want my marbles rolling too far away when I'm on the deck!

During progress slow downs, Barb continued with some of her quilt

projects – she doesn't like to be idle for too long. She is working on some mug mats as high school grad gifts for our 3 graduating grandkids, a window covering for the bathroom and a wall hanging for the trailer. She is also making 3 cloth baskets for a shelf cabinet in the bathroom. Busy, busy....

Now that we are home owners, we decided to participate in some of the activities in the area and the first opportunity was a small town Spring Fest. We have been to a few art & craft shows/fairs in Alabama and they have set our expectations – well, small town Ontario doesn't compare too well. Or maybe it was too big of a lot that they set up on but the Spring Fest was not attended by vendors. If I were to guess, there were only maybe a dozen vendors and one was the Niagara Zoo! A gent was holding a snake and suggested we come over to pat it – sorry pal, today is not the day we get over our fears! Right Tom? After this little let down of a fest, we went to the Ridgeway farmers market and were pleasantly surprised and will return again.

We took a trip into TO to visit Corrie and family – this is basically a full day trip, a 4+ hour return trip through TO! It is Nate's 10 ^th birthday and we wanted to pick up a table that we had in the house before we started Rving. We took Mack's grad gift in case he was home too.

So, now the deck frame work is level and squarish, time to

add the deck boards. I made a couple of jigs to use to place the screws so everything will be straight and even. It didn't take us too long to finish the deck top and sit and have beverage to celebrate – sorry Tom but we had to celebrate without you this time.

This brings us up to the middle of June. We hope all is good where ever you are....

After the Fire Works...

Hi out there, I'm back again with another update to our goin's on. I last left you on the edge of your seats when I showed you the fireworks that Terri and Mark put together to celebrate the Queen's birthday – that's Queen Victoria by the way, not my Barbie although she deserves fireworks too! After all this excitement, we took a day off and Barb worked in her design centre and I started setting up the batter boards to layout the deck we hope to build this summer.

Barb has been working on several projects so far but this one is particularly beautiful and we will keep this one to replace a picture we brought home with us this spring. While Barb kept herself busy sewing, I managed to get all the batter boards up and started to level up and quickly realized we would need to excavate a lot of soil in order to get the deck low enough to match up with the back door. Oops, back to the drawing board for plan B!

While we're deciding on a new plan, we drove down to Terri & Mark's new house in Ellicottville, NY to help out with their dock project. They have a stream that meanders by their place and they want to build a deck platform so you can sit in an Adirondack chair and enjoy the wilds of nature – and that would

include those pesky skitters!

 

You know, when we're down south, we would spend a few hours on a beautiful day on the deck at Big Daddy's enjoying a cool one and watching the Fish River go by. Well, that also happens when we're here – not going to Big Daddy's but sitting on the deck of He's Not Here, doing exactly the same thing – enjoying a cool one and watching the ever powerful Niagara River go by.

On Saturday, we had a wonderful visit with Corrie, Nate, Dawn, Jessica and Lilly. It was a beautiful day where we could all sit around the patio table to catch up and then have lunch. A box of Smarties and ice cream cones kept the kids happy while the adults chit chatted. After lunch, we got the bean bag toss out for the kids but soon the bigger kids got involved and we all had more fun.

 

This brings us up to the end of May and a good time to close off. The picture below shows what stage of the reno we were at this time last year. Hope all is well out there, wherever you are....