I didn’t post pictures of the deck yesterday, and I’m realizing that I’m doing everyone a huge disservice, because its SO BEAUTIFUL! So behold, our gorgeous deck!!
Like I mentioned yesterday, we have to exchange the railings we got for the stairs, so those aren’t on. Those, plus a nice aluminum gate will finish things off just right 🙂 But obviously, its still very usable like this, and I couldn’t be happier!
I’ve been feeling high stress the last few days, and I feel SO much better today! I love this kind of project, so I don’t think that’s been my point of stress. I do think I’ve put together at least part of it, though.
Before we ordered the deck, we went back and forth between treated wood or composite decking, bigger or smaller, aluminum or wood wailings, aluminum or wood stringers, etc. We obviously decided on composite and aluminum, for lots and lots of reasons, and I’m really happy with our choice. But if you’ve done any deck building or pricing, you likely know that we chose the most expensive combination. No, our composite is not top of the line, and neither are our railings, and we got amazing deals thanks to some of Brady’s work contacts, but YIKES it still came out to a pretty hefty price! And to be completely honest, I struggled with that! Our house is amazing, and I fear sometimes people think we’re over here just dripping money, which we indeed are not. We saved and researched and were really smart about our decisions, but here we were choosing such an expensive option. I do NOT require the best of everything. Not. At. All. I really don’t want to appear like we do. I made jokes to friends and family about how I would likely feel gross about the amount we were spending on our deck until it was up, and we’d laugh about it. And today, with how I’m feeling, I think that was actually really true!! I think the stress of the expensive materials and the pressure to not mess any of it up really was getting to me. Now that it is pretty much done, and it is perfectly imperfect, just like I like it, I feel like I can breathe again. The pressure is off, and I’m so relieved!
Turns out, I really don’t have any regrets about choosing the deck we chose. It is bang on! It’s everything we wanted. There is no way a baby will get splinters crawling on our deck. We can hose the sucker off easily and it’ll dry super fast. We don’t have to treat/paint/stain it every year or two. It can just be. And its SO pretty!! I’m so happy with how it turned out!
Rant over 🙂 And deck almost over, haha!