When I slipped away last September, I had concluded reporting on what I thought at the time was a fairly extensive home repair at our cottage. That was shoring up of our sagging family room floor and the installation of new carpet. We threw in a new sliding glass door to the deck for good measure. As it turned out, that was just a taste.
Happy with our nifty (and level) new family room floor, we thought "what else could we do to spruce up the cottage? Hey, what about a new deck?" The old one was a bit (a large bit) tired. If we kept it we would be staining it again soon, a job we enjoy less with every passing year. And as progressive-thinking seniors, we asked that always pertinent question "what are we waiting for?" So with eyes wide open (as well as our pocketbook), we plowed ahead.
Our first step seemed obvious. We called our builder Dave and set a meeting. We had a nice chat. We sorted out the details for a bigger, more elegant natural wood deck for the cottage. We also discussed and arrived at a mutually agreeable price for the project. I will refer to this reasonable amount as "x". More on that later.
To launch the project, our builder first had to remove the old deck. Before he started we cleared away the tables, chairs, deck equipment, hose fixtures and electrical appurtenances and moved them to a secure storage facility (the garage). So far so good. Here are a few final shots of the old deck, standing naked in the path of progress, offering itself up for the good of humanity. Or at least for the pleasure of our family and friends.
As far as we can tell this deck was added sometime in the 90s when the original deck was replaced with the family room (yes, the same room and crappy floor that was the subject of my last post). Sections of the deck show differing construction styles, so it may have been completed in stages. We'll likely never know. Despite its tired look, this deck provided us with several years of memories and will always be looked back upon with fondness. Except for those hours Nancy (the painter in the family) spent hand-staining the 100+ railing spindles. At least three times that I can remember.
Respects having been paid, let's move on. Here are a few shots of the deck as she went not-so-gently into that eternal night. Power tools were involved. The project engineer shown here is of course our builder Dave.
Here is a shot of the carpenter's caisson that eventually conveyed the remains of our former front porch to their interment, somewhere deep in the Greenbush Township woods. Where old lumber usually starts its journey to the next astral plane.
The extraction complete, the now laid-bare ground was ready to receive its new tenant.
Or so we thought. Notice the unusual looking supports under the bay window? And the somewhat porous wood panel at the base of the doorwall to the right? Dave noticed them, too (although to him I think they looked more like a tapestry of dollar signs). Both items were revealed when Dave removed a few pieces of the brown siding as part of the deck removal.
In retrospect, at this point we should have had him slap the disguising lengths of siding back into place and cancelled the whole deal. Go with a few potted plants and some lawn chairs in front of the cottage instead of a new deck. But no. We were too far down the rabbit hole at this point. Our children, used to high style and comfort, would never have accepted that. So, we crawled in a little further. Here's how it happened.
We were enjoying life back in The Pointes confident that our fancy new deck was taking shape in our little piece of paradise. Then our phones buzzed. It was Dave. He had texted us a few photos with the brief but scary words "we have issues." Yikes. Here's what we saw staring up at us from our Samsungs. This first shot is a close up of the corner. I can only say yecch.
And under the bay window, what has been passing as support.
And back under the smaller doorwall. We call this the chipmunk grand entrance.
If you look closely through the gap in the wood you can just make out the little acorn toll booth that has been a gold mine for which ever little critter got there first.
It didn't take long for us to realize that all this stuff had to be repaired before we could even think about building our new dream deck. So we hopped in the Traverse and made the trip up to examine the wreckage. We conferred with Dave ( who was doing his best to contain his good fortune). We hemmed and hawed and fretted and grimaced. And finally said the only thing we possibly could. "Dave, can you please make it all better?"
If you remember at the beginning of this post there was a sum of money I referred to as "x". That was the initial estimate for the new deck. Suffice it to say, the result of the "issues" development was that we were now in the ball park of "2x". But that wasn't all of it.
As Dave began deconstruction of the front of the house he had a couple more revelations. The first was that the sun porch bedroom floor, behind the chipmunk thruway shown above, had suffered over the years. It had sagged about two inches from its original position. Pulling back the old carpet in that room revealed that the first eight feet of the floor was an old patio slab. The remaining 40 inches or so was a wooden sub-floor added to bring the wall out flush with the adjacent family room. Here's a shot of the de-carpeted floor.
And a second shot with the wooden portion partially removed.
Note the aluminum tube sticking out from under the joist on the right. Odd, you say. I call that ductus interruptus. That tube runs over from the front furnace and is supposed to continue on over to the floor duct located in the remaining portion of the floor shown on the left. We always wondered why this room always seemed cold despite the fact that it contained the furnace closet. This could be the result of shoddy workmanship. Either that or a chipmunk gang has been raising cash by stripping the joint of precious metals.
And, oh yeah, the eaves. Bad. several rotten boards. Ugly.
Finally, our diligent builder pointed out to us that reconstructing the front of the cottage to raise the floor in the bedroom and build proper supports for the bay window would require destruction of a large portion of the current aluminum siding which would be - of course - impossible to match. Not to mention that all of the wooden casings in the bay windows and the windows around the corner to the north side of the sun porch were rotten, and should be replaced. That's five windows.
Our builder was quite philosophical about the whole thing. The cottage has stood for about 50 years now. Thirty of those in it's current configuration. Being constantly slammed by Lake Huron winds, water and sand. Throw in some crappy original construction materials and what is referred to in the building industry as "an owner job", and there you have it. Inevitable disaster. I sure felt better.
So Dave started on the next steps of ripping things out, propping things up, and methodically starting to make it all better. As we packed up and headed for home, things looked like this.
As we pulled out of the driveway, leaving our wounded piece of paradise in Dave's capable hands, I had only one thought. We were now at "3x".
I'll leave you at this point. At the nadir of our home-ownership woes. And pick up the story in my next post - Reconstruction.
Until then, Grosse Pointe Charles.
