As promised, here is another update. I know, two days in a row. As I mentioned yesterday, we finished up the deck staining project before we left on vacation. It only took all summer, but we got it done and it looks much better. By the end, we might have gotten a little sloppy, but we were both just ready to be done. We love the two tier deck, but it is a pain in the butt to stain. While we were staining, we were already discussing how we would love to replace the deck with the decking that you don’t have to do anything to. No staining, no intense cleaning, nothing but awesomeness. Awesomeness until we saw the price tag… gross. We have 50 deck boards and when the decking we are looking at is $30ish/per piece, that adds up. We also want to re-do the railings on the deck. This was the first and I hope the only time I have to stain deck spindles. What a pain in the butt, scuse me, what a MAJOR pain in the butt that was. I didn’t count the spindles on our deck, I didn’t want to know. But, now it is all done and it looks much better and is protected from the elements.
When we were done staining the deck, we put together the grill that my parents bought us as a housewarming gift shortly after we moved in. We were cutting it pretty close on our promise that we would have it up and use it before the end of the season. We didn’t want to put it together until the deck was done being stained because it is rather heavy and we didn’t want to move it a million times. So, it is together and had its initial use for BBQ ribs, which were quite yummy. I know Andrew will continue to wow me with his grill skills. He is a little bit of a pyro, so the fire thing doesn’t scare him. Me, that is another story. I am a little leery about anything with fire. Although, I did get use to cooking on a gas stove and now love it, so perhaps there is hope for me.
As I also mentioned in my post yesterday, we were at Target (one of my favorite places in the world) before we left and got an amazing score on some outdoor furniture. I think they were pretty stoked to see it leaving the store. Once again, my new set of wheels came in handy for hauling these bad boys home. We scored two loveseats for a total of a little under $200. Plus, we found an end table to match for $20. The loveseats were originally $199 each and then we got them for ½ off, plus another 5% off with our Target debit card. Let me stop here and put a plug in for the Target debit card and for those of you that I have already converted, you can skip this. The Target debit card is amazing. If you shop at Target EVER, it will be the best decision you make. The card is just like a bank debit card, it is linked right up to your checking account, every time you shop you get 5% off your purchase, you get free shipping on Target.com, through your card, your purchases are tracked and they give you customized coupons for the things you buy and we all know how much I love coupons, 1% of your purchase price goes to the school of your choice, and from time to time they also send you amazing coupons in the mail. What isn’t to love about this? I wish they had this back in the days when I was working at Target because I would have had a much easier time pushing the debit card over the credit card.
Alright, so back to the finished deck. Here are some pictures of everything. I am excited for my mums to take off too! I realized as I was typing this that it is now dark outside and the picture thing isn't going to happen, so here are a couple of photos that I have taken. In the first one, you can kind of see the new seating and in the second one you can check out the new grill... under the cover. I will try to remember to take some photos tomorrow when I get home from work and it is still light out. Tonight it was so nice I had to take Buddy on a walk, so it was getting dark by the time we got back.
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