We also re-stained the porch and rails to freshen up the look.
On that trip, we also took the opportunity to buld the additional porch on the back of the house that you saw in the previous blog post. There was a delay in the staining/painting, the reason for which will be obvious below.
The fall onslaught of the love bugs was particularly pernicious this season...another reason to be grateful for the screen porch.
Those things came up out of the grass every morning, and did not go away until we had our first good cool front. We tried to stay on top of the mowing, but that only marginally affected the pervasive pests. Our lawn tractor's mowing deck finally gave up the ghost after six years of abuse, so I removed the deck and relegated the tractor to Denise's yard machine. I did upgrade to a heavy duty mower, which was put to good use between the heavy rains.
With the painting and yard mowing taken care of, the place was starting to look good...just in time for all the leaves that would soon cover it all up.
Another bit of fun took place in Fort Worth, where I went to help Joe build a new deck for Denise's sister. He had pre-cut and done some router work on the pieces in Baton Rouge, and I arrived with the trailer to load it up for the trip.
Upon arrival, we cleared the existing deck and got down to the demolition. First was the brick patio that had been there for decades.
Next up was to tackle the new foundation and flooring. We had to temporarily jack up the roof to remove the old posts and install some temporary bracing.
We discovered that in addition to sand, there were large boulders added to the fill area beneath the bricks. That slowed us down and also added to the debris pile.
The next order of business was to install the new posts and roof beams to get ready for the flooring.
We had pre-stained the flooring and it was mostly a straight install job with a few minor cuts around the posts.
After the deck was installed, we moved on to the railing and the built in bench seating/storage. There was still some painting to do and some saw work to make sure the pieces fit properly.
The benches came together nicely, and were very sturdy. They were integrated with the side rails. Joe also incorporated a garbage can cabinet into the design.
Trim work was added as the work progressed.
Scott and Cheryl were off in Hawaii while we worked on the project. I was a little concerned about the construction debris on the afternoon before their return, but we worked into the night to finish the last bits.
We were wheel barrowing the last load of debris to the trailer when they came home the next morning. But the deck was done and Aunt Cheryl was very happy with the new look of her porch.
Well, we continue to add the bounty of fall to the freezer. Scott got a white tail which other than the backstrap was ground with bacon for future burgers or whatever. He also nabbed a few fat grey ducks on a trip to the Sabine reserve...it's been a while since any of these were in my freezer. I can hardly wait to potroast those babies.
One final note before I close out this part of my update. The critter cam has been underwhelming with the quality of pictures, so I have deployed an upgrade (hopefully). I've had quite a few deer show up this fall, but the picture quality is very poor. I did get one decent shot, and there are a few daytime pictures that verify that we still have some gobblers hanging about. I hope the new camera shows me what I've been missing (besides a bunch of coons, skunks and possums).
That about catches me up on fall activities. before I do a Christmas/New year blog post I'll have a 2 or 3 part "summer vacation" extravaganza. Check back in a week or so. I'd like to get that done before I get too caught up in holiday festivities.
