TGIF & Back Deck

Hi!  There's no school for the kiddos today, so I thought I might have to fight them for computer time! However, a last minute call to the grandparents and it's just as if the kids are in school!  We had a late start this morning, though.  It was nice for everybody to sleep in a bit.  DS and DD both have colds (back to school always brings new germs!) and DD got bit by a little yappy dog last night!  :-( She was at a friend's house and just before I was to pick her up, their dog grabbed the back of her pants by her calf and broke the skin and gave her a bruise!  She was pretty shaken up about it last night, but was fine this morning.  The friend's mom was quite apologetic and said they are going to have to give the dog back to wherever they got it because it's just been too unruly!

So, guess what I was working on outside... No, not the treehouse, but it's kinda related.  It's the back deck.  Here it is way back in 2008 before we added on the back room.  There's the old breezeway and screened room with the trellis. The old railing for the stairs is behind the red wagon.

Here's another view from the side.  There's my mom's little trailer!  We built the back room out to the deck.

Here is the same deck with the back room built out to it.  I realized most of the pictures I'd taken of the outside back room didn't include the deck.  Hence the pictures of the wingback chair and the dyed fabric.  The chair is actually sitting on a small 2 foot addition to we put on the deck sometime, but we can't remember when!

 So, back to the project!  DS needed more boards for his treehouse floor and we decided to use the deck boards since we were eventually going to replace it anyway.  Our long-term plan is to put a screened sunroom back there.  But for the meantime it now looks like this:

Here are some in progress pics.  The deck is gone and the old steps going down to the yard are just to the right of the door behind the grey chair. (Those steps are by the railing in the top 2 pics.) (Also, I found a big black toad under the deck! He (she?) hopped over to my parent's trailer. I hope he'll be happy over there!)

Here I've moved some patio stones over from our big pile in the back corner of the yard.  I didn't want to move too many as we will eventually have to move them again.  They are big 2'x2' stones and they are heavy! (When digging out the dirt I found a blue/black salamander, just under the dirt like a worm!  Unfortunately, my shovel cut it in half.  :-(  We've seen these before, but I didn't realize they went underground!)

 Trying to figure out how to make the path over to the trailer.

 Trying out some plants from the front temporary garden.

 Notice the bush in the righthand corner.  That's been there for so long! I had to dig it out to make both sides look the same width. Before the old deck stuck out on the left-hand side. I really wanted to even out both sides.

The bush is gone, but I still need one more patio stone on the right.

And here it is "finished" again:

Not sure what we'll do with the hill on the right.  The last patio stone is just balanced on an extra 6X6!  Not very safe!  I'm sure HH will safen it up before winter!  I still need to put some fill around the stones and maybe remove the last 2 6X6's from the old steps that are still in the ground. Also, the cinder block steps will have to be replaced!

Have a wonderful weekend! :-)