I took my older son outside this afternoon and the toddler stayed in with Daddy. Jamie was playing in his play area so I decided to do a bit of weeding. We have a deck that comes off the back of our split level house so it's quite high off the ground and the ground underneath it is covered in stones. There's a few spots where the grass had been encroaching for a while and bugging me whenever I mowed. It's not where passers-by would see it easily so it's rather neglected.
So I settle in and start the process of untangling the grass and stones. I thought I'd just work on it for a bit while Jamie played and get it looking a bit better. Time passed and I kept at it, tossing the stones up on the pile and pulling out grass. Eventually I make my way down to the "felt" which turned out to instead be some burlap very unsuited for the task. Just another in a long line of problems with this house. Just for fun, it turns out the burlap was a strip of patch where the other felt didn't quite make it to the edging. So my "little" project turns into replacing that mess.
Along the way, more fun. We've been debating replacing our deck or giving it a facelift. We really don't want to go through the time and expense of replacing it and were leaning towards face lift. Except, in my digging the rocks away from one of the supporting poles, I discover the pole is not actually in the ground. Instead, there's a big slab of rough-edged concrete going from one pole to the other and the poles are sitting on top of that. Not bad enough? The pole is only half on the concrete, half just hanging there a smidge above the ground. Nice.
So now we're in the "replace the deck before it collapses" camp and also the "wtf are we going to do with that mass of concrete?" camp. Ugh.
Nearly 3 hours later, the depressing bottoms of the poles are again hidden from site and the well worn burlap replaced by a fresh piece of felt. The edge is actually an edge again with the grass no longer invading the stones. I'm exhausted but happy I put that one small stretch to rights again.
But the deck... Sigh.
Michelle
