All Hands On Deck

When we had our home built two years ago we opted out of the deck option. It was a way for us to save money at the time and it is also something that we knew we* could do on our own down the road. Well this summer is the summer to build the deck.
*(Please note my use of the word we here does not by any means denote an equal partnership. Instead it is more like 99% Mr. Cherry and 1% me.)
The first step was to decide what we wanted in a deck and design it. We opted to go with a fairly simple and small deck. Mr. Cherry was able to use his computer designing skills to draw out the plan via the computer.

After presenting our plan to the city inspector, the next step would be to dig the footings for the structure. Since half of our year here is spent under a blanket of snow, we have to go 5 feet deep on our footings. Mr. Cherry was determined to dig the 8 footings on his own with a post hole digger. (If you haven't been reading this blog for two years, you may not remember that Mr. Cherry also graded our yard pulling a railroad timber contraption around behind him.) And not only did he succeed in a weekend, he also found a sledge hammer buried in the yard in the process. Bonus!
This past weekend found him pouring the footings. (That is after he used the shop vac to drain the ground water that had seeped in over the week.)

After many hours of hot sweaty work, so many trips to Menards that Peachy even recognizes the place, 34 bags of cement at 60 pounds each, and 3 we have 8 cement filled holes in the ground.