It Was All A Dream

Or at least, I hoped it was. To back track a little, a storm came through about a month ago. We already had a few trees taken down, which I blogged about before, and this one stayed because it was alive and healthy. Well, the storm made the ground super soggy, and we realized the roots weren't very long. So...

It ended up uprooting and falling in the neighbors yard, taking out their deck, elecrtricity, internet, cable, propane tank, and our shared fence.

It was a vacant home that was waiting for new renters, so we had to track down the owner. He was on vacation that week, of course. So it took a week to get him, then another week to get coordinated and get our tree guy back out to clean it out. We decided to have one more tree taken down in our yard while he was here, and remove all the stumps from all the trees he took down last time. Well, that tree that we decided (rather impulsively) to take out, fell the wrong way, and this time onto OUR deck:

It hit the roof, and cracked our 60 year old cement deck floor, and cracked the walls holding the cement flooring. We have to get the entire thing ripped out and redone. Surprise, they don't make things like they used to. And that awesome railing :P is no longer made, so we're getting a new wood railing. Writing it out, I'm actually sad to not have that railing. Looking at it in pictures I actually think it's quite endearing. Here's a close up of one of the cracks:

Sadly, it's been a week since we've heard from the tree guy since he said he would send out his contractor friend. We wanted to talk to his friend first to see what he said he would replace, and then we're getting our own quotes to compare. Obviously the deck held up for-ev-er, so I want to make sure it's built just as sturdy. After all, we didn't drop $15k in renovations in this house to slack on ANYTHING. It's an investment in not only us having a happy life here, but also for resale, should we sell it. Hopefully it will all be over with soon so we can plant that dang grass!