Expletives Deleted

I was going to ask Doug to guest write this blog post for me because it's mostly about demo-ing the deck that formed the floor of our beach house screened porch.

I figured he would do a better job than I could of explaining everything that was wrong with how it was constructed by the previous owner.

But then I realized that I would have to delete way too many expletives, and besides, most of you who are reading this probably don't understand trusses and beams and loads any better than I do.

So I'm just going to tell you that the deck is now torn off and that it's a miracle it didn't collapse sometime over the years because there was almost nothing holding it up.  We also found that the deck wasn't even properly connected to the porch walls.

As Doug was tearing off the boards, he was telling me how he's going to redo it.  I just smiled and nodded because I know that he will do it right...unlike the previous owner.

Here are a few pix of the deck as it was coming off:

Luckily we found a whole sheet of T-111 and some plywood to fill in the growing open space as we worked or else Doug would have found himself with nothing to stand on:

Here's me inspecting from outside as the space inside grew too small for both of us:

My job was to haul the old boards around to the back of the trailer because we're going to use them to fix the shed ramp, which is currently so steep that only a mountain goat can climb it without slipping:

We also made a really cool discovery this weekend.  We've been looking at paint colors for the exterior--which is now just a hideous shade of mustard everywhere--walls, trim, steps....

We had kind of settled on aqua, coral, and white.  As Doug was cleaning up on Saturday, he noticed a small part of the trailer where it wasn't tightly connected to the living room addition.  The mustard paint hadn't quite reached that spot....and behind it was aqua.

That must have been the original color of the trailer.  So it's going back to its roots and will be jazzed up with white window trim and coral awnings.  The coral will also be used for the shutters on the living room addition. The steps and railings will be painted white.

Maybe I can find some coral and white geraniums for the flower beds.