All Decked Out.

I mentioned last week that I would post pictures of the deck finally being finished this past weekend. Since we ended up having a deck party, then Easter, and I got impatient with waiting to post the fact the kitchen reno is finally underway… I just didn’t have a chance to post it. So, without further ado, I present the latest project checked off our never-ending to-do list:

It took us two dreadful, allergy filled weeks since I got sick and was out of commission for a week. I’m just happy it’s finished, and we can finally enjoy a little piece of suburban paradise. It’s much nicer to just look at the afters, but I’m not going to sugar coat it… there was certainly a LOT of work involved in the process! Thank god for our beautiful truck.

Yeah so our backyard is a dirt patch. Just ignore that.

And concentrate on the fact once the deck was finished, those trees in between the posts bloomed :)

Ok, where was I. Oh, yes.. the extensive labor part:

Luckily that part’s over. I can’t say I’m dying to build another one anytime soon, but we definitely have the know how to tackle it if necessary. And I mean absolutely necessary. Like, we move into another house with rusted, chipping, 80’s white spiral metal fencing on our deck again. We added some nice solar lights on the posts, since we’re all about living off the grid.

I mentioned here that we just couldn’t walk out of IKEA with just kitchen cabinets. How can you leave that place with just the things you have on your list? It’s im-poss-i-ble. We were thisclose to the check out line, when we fall for those last minute BUY ME! BUY ME! displays. See, we had just gone to Crate & Barrel and found this table that we both fell head over heals in love with. But for $1,899 (seriously, that’s almost how much I paid for my last CAR!) we had to just put it on our dream list. Then that display at IKEA surfaced just before the registers, and we both stopped in our tracks.

 

So that picture I had of our cart “with a little something extra”… well you can probably guess at this point what it was:

And the table was about $1,800 less than Crate & Barrel’s. Sure, the leafs don’t hide all pretty like CB’s, but I guarantee you anyone that looked at that table would never in a million years guess it was IKEA! So Saturday morning we spent the best, most relaxing morning outside (IMO, since our honeymoon) on the deck enjoying the new railing and table set… and some coffee and girly magazines :)

Then Saturday night we had some friends over to celebrate the completion.

But the party ended up being less of a deck party, and more of a yard party. Footballs were thrown, frisbees were tossed, first meets and reunions were made.

 

Then my pretty decorations that I moved out from the living room were pushed to the side to make way for a poker game. I’ll forgive you this time babe.

It ended up being a good amount of space to play on, but it stunk the gaps between the wood slats were a LITTLE too wide for poker chips.

But that didn’t stop Charlie from having a successful win.

    

I would say the return on investment was about 1,000% so far. And it’s been less than a week! It’s an understatement to say I’m excited for more fun on the deck. It’s amazing what a small (ok, fairly large) change from before to after can make:

I just hope the kitchen gives us this much gratification once it’s done!