Deck re-do

This weekend I lazed around the house and the pool while my super, awesome, handy husband took on a pretty big project all by himself. He's way more motivated than I am let me tell you. He's been dying to redo the railing on our deck since we moved in. Personally I thought the deck was fine. Yes it's old and could use a facelift but it never bothered me too much.

Well can't say the same for my husband. So using some Cedar wood he got for free through his work he single-handedly replaced the entire railing going around our deck, sanded and stained it AND extended part of it so that we now have a little bar to eat on/serve food. Oh and it only took him a day and a half! Yeah he pretty much kicks ass. Now onto the pictures.

So I'm a super bad blogger and didn't think to take any before shots so all I have are the bottom two photos from before.

Here's our deck looking up from the backyard (obviously). Nothing special, kinda old.

Here is a picture from our housewarming party, if you look close you can see how old and worn the wood is, kinda ugly but functional.

Again I was a bad blogger and didn't think to take pictures when he first tore out the old railing. So here's a picture of the new, un-stained railing after he first put it up. He measured, cut and installed all the wood himself.

This is to the right of the house, as you can see there is a section of the railing that now extends out a bit further. This will be our new eating/serving bar.

This wood was initially pretty ugly in it's original state but after a lot of sanding and scraping he got down to the pretty stuff.

And here it is once it was stained. So shiny! He also added a little backer so that we don't have to worry about dishes/glasses we have on there falling off the back.

Here is the right side again, now that it's finished.

Here's the left side. Oh yeah he also planted all those flowers, not only does he build shit, he gardens. I sorta feel a bit useless around the house, though I am in the process of growing a human so that's a win for me!

Here's another shot of the new eating/serving bar. He's also going to build a couple barstools to go underneath so we can start eating dinner out there.

Another close up shot of the new eating area. If you look closely you can see that the floor of the deck is still that ugly, old wood. Unfortunately that's not something he can really replace himself. So instead he plans to power wash and stain the floor and then we'll buy a nice outdoor rug, that way there isn't so much of a contrast between the new wood and the old wood.

I must say having such a handy guy around the house not only helps make our place look a lot better but saves a TON of money. I think all in all we spent around $100 at Home Depot for some supplies. Can't beat that!