Deck Reno Stage 1, Part 1

We might have fallen in love with our house the first time we saw it, but I definitely can't say the same for the deck. We stood out on it and admired the views of the mountains, horses, train, and backyard while dreaming of the day we could tear down the piece of junk we were standing on and replace it with something entirely new. It's bare, exposed wood with no stain or paint, so it's been deteriorating in the sunlight and weather for who knows how many years. The wood is warped in places, cracked in lots of places, and moldy in places. Nails are sticking out, the railings aren't secured too well, and there's an odd half-step up in the middle that you don't see until you're tripping over it. All of that being said, though, we were very thankful that there was a deck at all, giving us a place to put the grill and to sit while we save our pennies for a remodel.

That remodel was supposed to be next summer. We want to tear everything out and replace it with a Trex deck that has a whole new layout and design that makes more sense for us. But in the last couple months both the hubs and I came to the same epiphany at similar times: next summer wasn't going to happen. If we do this deck the way we want to - or at all, let's be honest - we're going to need a couple more years to save and be smart with our money first. We decided to do a smaller, cheaper, Stage 1 update to the deck to buy 3 to 5 more years. I'll share the bigger part of that update next week (rain has been making progress difficult this week) but for now I'll show you a smaller, simple change we made that has made a huge impact.

One of the cool features of the deck is the built in, brick planter boxes that hug the house. There are two smaller ones that flank the chimney and one much larger one that sits under the kitchen window and next to some built in wood storage. I've always gotten excited and inspired when I see them...but last summer flew and by the time I took a break from the painting and organizing and whatever else I was doing last year, the summer was gone and it was time to ride out the colder months. With warmer weather finally sticking around, though, it was time to go flower shoppin'.

I first need to say that I have nothing close to a green thumb. I know nothing about plants except that they need water and sunshine, and I've been kind of hoping that's all I really need to know. I will say, though, that if these flowers don't make it all the way through the summer, I'll do my research for next time and learn some basics. Because otherwise it's kind of a waste of money.

Here are some before shots of the flower boxes. (Also, while you're there, feel free to take notice of the crappy deck that surrounds the flower boxes. And my dog, who can't stay out of pictures to save his life.)

You'll notice that there is a dead plant in one of the smaller boxes. That's because I was given a beautiful plant by a friend last fall as a housewarming gift that I planted...just in time for cooler weather. It was pretty for a couple weeks, anyway. Other than that, though, the boxes were empty. I knew the bigger one under the window was more of a mess than the smaller ones just by looking at it - it was full of dead weeds that had been Rounded Up to oblivion, for one - but I figured it would be as simple as stirring the dirt up a little bit and removing the weeds. To put it mildly...I was wrong.

I started out by cleaning up that wood storage area to the right of the bigger box that you can kind of see in the picture. It wasn't a complete mess, but there were several things that had collected there in the last year that needed to either be trashed or put in a more logical home to help the whole deck look more cleaned up. After that, I started in on the boxes themselves. The small boxes were super easy like I thought; some minor tilling and stirring up with a trowel and we were good to go. The big box, though, was a nightmare. On the surface it looked like just those dead weeds, which easily pulled right out. But when I started turning and stirring up the dirt, I hit a couple of rocks. I thought that was odd and tossed them aside. Then I found a couple small chunks of brick. I thought that was even more odd, but again figured it was a little mistake. The more I stirred, though, the more I discovered that this entire stupid box was chock full of bricks, rocks, concrete chunks, broken glass, and rusted beer cans. Awesome, huh? I would really like to gather every person who has ever lived in and/or owned this house, line them up, and slap them in the faces. I'd also like to ask them what was so hard about tossing all this crap in the garbage can instead?

It became clear pretty quick that the best rule of thumb was going to be to remove all the dirt - or close to it - from the entire box and start over. There was just too much crap in there and all I could picture was digging in here with my future kiddos and having someone cut themselves on a piece of 30 year old glass or a rusted beer can and I knew I couldn't take the lazy way out of this one. I bit the bullet and carried about a million buckets of dirt over to the fence line to dump it, slowly and methodically and painfully emptying that deceivingly huge box, pulling out every piece of garbage I could along the way since we mow the grass on the other side of the fence and don't need to bend any more blades on chunks of brick than we already do on sticks and rocks.

This is what I found on the first day.

And this is what I found on the second, much more labor intensive day.

It was blazing hot, dirt is super heavy, and I broke two nails on chunks of brick, but eventually it was all moved and I was left with this.

There is dirt still in there, clearly, but only a couple of inches and it's all brick, rock, glass, etc. free. You can see that I removed all the dirt up to about a foot deep in the whole span of the box (this is where I need to say once more that dirt is heavy). We ended up filling the box with basic top soil from Home Depot, and it shockingly took eight 40-pound bags to fill it back up (meaning that I removed eight 40-pound bags worth of dirt...which is heavy. It needed to be said one more time.)

Next came the fun part! Picking out and planting pretty flowers. We went with pinky-white Apple Blossoms in the small boxes and a mixture of Apple Blossoms, purple Petunias, and reddish Celosias in the bigger box.

Here are the after pictures.

Fingers crossed they grow and spread a little bit, filling the boxes with happiness and color. All of these flowers are annuals, meaning that we will only have them for this summer and then we'll have to start over again. I think I'd like to see how this summer goes and maybe invest in some perennials next year - bright yellow marigolds are what I envision - that we can hang on to a little bit longer instead, but we will see.

All total, this part of the Stage 1 renovation came to about $62. That's about $50 in flowers (the Apple Blossoms were $5 each, and the Petunias and Celosias were both $3 each) and $12 in top soil to fill in the big box after we had to remove all that unfortunate dirt. That's definitely more than I imagined filling the planter boxes would cost, but considering how much better the deck looks because of them I think it's worth it. There just aren't too many things sadder than an empty planter box. 

Here's one more before and after of the bigger box.

Before

After

I love my pretty little flowers, but I can't wait to be able to finish the big portion of the Stage 1 deck renovation so A. I can share it with you and B. I can look at it's beautiful final results. The little bit we were able to get done before the rain came this week is making me so excited for the finished product.