Musings of a tired, old-ish deck

As I said before, our new house needs work. Lots of work. Not as in the move walls, change layout kind of stuff (like our other house did), but just lots of cosmetic updates. I think this house was built in 1990 and I'm pretty sure it hasn't been updated since. So every room needs love which is fun for us... but also daunting because with four littles we don't always have the time or energy to choose finishes and make the updates.

But one thing that Chris and I knew had to get done asap, was putting a railing on the back deck.

The deck looked like this:

not the best picture but you can kind of see the deck.... and more importantly see the lack of railings!

Kind of sad looking we thought. Also unsafe. I'd give the triplets about 2 minutes out there before they all went running in different directions and right off the end. It's not crazy high but high enough that it's not safe.

What we love about the deck placement though, is that there are two sliding glass doors, one that leads into the kitchen area and one that leads into what we've deemed, "the playroom". This is perfect both for back yard bbq's and for moving in and out of the playroom during the day.

Since the deck was so tired looking, we debated whether to tear it out and just build a new one (as always, when I say "we" I mean Chris! I am NOT handy!) But that would either cost a lot of money (hired out) or cost a lot of time (Chris building a new deck from scratch). So we decided that the current deck wasn't so bad! haha. Just needs a fresh coat of stain and some cement reinforcement that Chris was able to add pretty easily.

So- after being here only three days, Chris went to Menards, got materials and put up a railing. For doing this on the fly, I think he did such a great job!

It's safe. I think it looks nice and the cost was very minimal. At some point we'll jazz it up. At some point I'll take of the pillow tags (haha, did you catch that? I was still deciding whether to keep these when I took the pictures). At some point we're going to stain it all for sure! I'm thinking of staining the floor a dark color and then maybe painting the railings white. I'm kind of digging that look lately but we'll see. Even if we don't get to the staining/ painting this summer, at least we can be outside with the kids!

We are all LOVING the ease of indoor/ outdoor playing!

Oh and I had to include this picture:

Whenever Colin wasn't directly helping with the deck, his favorite spot was sitting in a chair in our room and watching Chris work. :)