Let's Knock That Out

You know how you make something look really pretty, then you stop and look around and realize everything around it looks ugly?  Yeah.  That happened to me.  When we finished the pergola for the ceremony site, we were so excited.  I stood on the stage admiring all of our hard work, then I looked at the building and thought yuck.

As luck would have it, Menards was having one of their random sales on items that I just so happen to need.  I loaded up my cart with about 30 gallons of stain and Kim and I got to work.

One thing that I have noticed is that I’m not particularly good at taking pictures and documenting the work when I’m the one doing the work.  You’ll have to forgive me for these pictures.  They were all taken by staff members who had their photos taken by me many times and I think they were trying to blackmail me.

The first order of business was to get that deck stained.  It was long overdue, but it might be one of the jobs that I hate the most out at the golf course.  That’s really saying a lot because I’ve done a lot of jobs around here.

As you can see, we decided to tackle this project even with the onset of rain.  It was just something that had to be done to make the surrounding grounds look nice.  The day began with Kim’s saying, “Let’s just knock that out!”

The first part of the deck went really smoothly, then it felt like after lunch we were moving at a snails pace.  Just as we finished the final section, the rain began.  We high fived and called it quits for the day.

There was a problem.  With the deck looking so good, the fence behind number nine was looking kind of ratty.  Guess what!  We knocked that out in a day, too!  The first side of the fence went really well, but the side facing number nine green took forever.  That forever included a full five gallons of stain just for one side!  You can see what a difference it made!

The only problem with all of this staining was that after a few days, neither Kim nor I could lift our hands over our head.

Finally, just to finish things off, we decided that the upper deck with the balcony off of our bridal suite area needed some attention, too.  That made the whole area look complete.  You guessed it!  We knocked that out, too.

While we were up there, we had our carpenter put in some additional screws to make the whole thing nice and secure.

That’s the story of how Kim and I put on nearly 20 gallons of stain in a weeks worth of time.