All Decked Out

Hick has been working on the deck of the Double Hovel flip house. First he had to tear off the falling-down boards from the old deck. It's off the kitchen, on the side of the house. Hick didn't want to leave a door to nowhere. Or take out the door and try to patch up the wall and siding. Or rebuild the full-size deck, because lumber is expensive these days. So he's putting on a new, smaller version.

Here's what it looked like when we bought the house last October:

Not the most attractive deck in the world, but it looked okay to me. Not to Hick, who thought it was a death trap.

That's the old deck, after Hick and Old Buddy removed the decking. Hick says he has no idea how it was still clinging to the house. That whoever built it didn't really know what they were doing.

There's Old Buddy, with the framing of the new deck.

And here he is putting on the new decking. NO, those are NOT the steps for the new deck. I told Hick I hoped they weren't going up and down those steps. He said they were not. But the purpose of them escapes me.

In true Hickography form, Hick has isolated the subject of his picture in the middle of a vast sea of uninteresting clutter. I will try to give you a zoomed-in photo...

Hick says he's going to paint the deck, but he doesn't know what color. He has some black paint, but I don't think a black deck would look good. Maybe gray or brown. He says he will be painting, not just staining. I suppose he'll look at some other decks before he decides.

So, it's a smaller deck, but still a deck. Suitable for a couple chairs and a grill. The sides are meant to keep people from stepping off the edge. Not to contain small children or pets, who should be supervised anyway, since there was never a gate at the steps.