Great Deck Fiasco

My husband deserves a medal, along with some therapy for all our trials this weekend.  At the very least, we have earned the extra bottles of wine required to make it through.  The good news is that we lived to tell the tale and haven’t strangled each other.

We have a nice big cedar deck at the back of our home.  The pervious owners didn’t do anything to it and by now, it shows.  I have pulled out enough splinters from little hands.  So Saturday (after the rain stopped), Steve and little helper Laura went to Home Depot to rent a sander.  On the way, Steve calls to say that actually, he has to take the car in to lovely Canadian Tire because it is making satanic noises and he thinks it may explode (or words to that effect.  He’s a little dramatic when stressed.) 

Owen and I go pick them up in our brand new car and continue on with the mission.  The rented sander thingy is huge. It weighs a ton and won’t fit in the trunk of the brand new car.  Steve, already hyped up on coffee, is ready to explode.  Logic prevails and we load the beast onto the brand new back seats but there is no room for the kids.  So Steve runs it home and I take the monkeys over to Rogers to kill time (and $20). 

After we get home, the sanding monster turns on for 2 seconds then dies.  Oh yea.  It turns out we don’t have the right electrical output to run this thing. Hunh?  That would have been helpful to know at the store before we spend the morning dragging it home.  Steve runs the thing back to the store (in the new car), yells until he gets a refund and buys a belt sander. I’m sure there was no drama involved there.

Hand-sanding a deck is a big, back-breaking job.  It is loud, dusty and tiring. On the plus side, the job ends quickly when you accidently run over the cord with the sander, grind it to bits and blow a fuse.   *sigh*  Well, he got about 3/4 of the way through and no one got electrocuted.   Personally, I think the backyard nesting robins had something to do with it.  The little robin-lets are hatching and I imagine the mom was quite pissed at all the noise.  A few selected pecks might really be the culprit. 

So the deck will get finished eventually and likely cost much more that it would have to have hired someone to do it for us.  A second sander or electrical repair, several chiropractor appointments and bottles of wine do add up, you know.  There will be much celebration and stomping on the deck if/when we are victorious. 

Now how shall we waste our next weekend?