Funny what you can get accomplished when the sun is out

Yes, we had a beautiful day on Sunday and that is saying alot because it has been a very mild winter. Maybe it was the time change.

Whatever it was, we cleaned out the mud room and gave it a fresh coat of paint. We want to lay tile down and thought we would paint while we didn't have to worry about the floor. While that was drying, we tackled the deck project.

When we built the deck, three years ago, we had the posts in place, but didn't finish the job with any real railings. We did attach lumber on the tops of the posts as a temporary way to keep people over five feet tall from falling off, but that didn't make our friends with children feel any better. We took off the minimal pieces of wood and secured 2x4 pieces of treated lumber to the tops of the posts. These will act as railings. Next, we need to decide on how to finish off the top. I am leaning toward white oak, which is what the floor is made of.

On a side note, a few months ago, my parents replaced their deck with that recycled plastic product. Their contractor took care to save the 2x10 pieces of treated wood so that we could use them. At the time, we didn't have a real purpose laid out for this lumber, but we only have three of the original ten that we garnered. It has turned out to be a good score as we used four of them on this project alone.

We still need to add lower railings in. I think we are going to go for the industrial look and use metal conduit. It is a compromise on what Kent wants and what I want. I won't go into those specifics.

We did need to work out a solution to what we were calling "Rita-proofing". This isn't a slight to our friend Rita, but merely a remembrance to her accident and the need to prevent that from happening. In short, our friends, Rita and Aaron, were working on their house. They have a balcony/deck off the one side. They were trying to lower something over the side of this when the railing collapsed and Rita fell to the ground. Luckily, her she only sustained serious injury to her hand, but it nevertheless, it was quite the scare. It definitely could have been worse, but Rita is quite athletic and tough as nails.

The theme of the story is to make sure all railings are secure. We used deck post anchors (that seriously, were just laying around from our deck off the old house. Sometimes I am glad Kent doesn't throw anything away.) to secure the posts on the deck close to the house. We added an extra measure by securing the post to the house as well with some treated lumber.

As it grew dark, we cleaned up the outside mess, only to finish up the mudroom. We had to put most of it back in order but held off on some. We would just have to move it next weekend when we tile the floor.