Backyard Deck and Updating the House

     It's been over a year since I've written here; I've had a lot going on and didn't feel up to writing, but now I'm motivated to get back to it.  We've moved down to Texas, and before I get to that I want to post about the last of the house improvements that we did to our Seattle house because I'm really proud of them!

     Back when we first moved into this house we knew that the deck would have to be torn down and rebuilt.  One of the previous owners simply had new boards placed over the old ones, which led to both layers rotting and to fungus growing in between the layers.  It was gross.  Not only that, but the railing was very wobbly and it was leaning out toward the yard, which we knew wouldn't be safe for the kids who were 5 and 3 years old at the time.

The following few pictures are in a previous post,

but I'm including them here again for an easy comparison to how it looks now.

A few months later I got fed up with procrastinating the deck and I tore down what I could.

Here's what I uncovered:

 

Because I'm overweight and the under-layer was in such bad shape, I didn't feel safe on top of the deck to take down the rest of it, so a few months later we hired someone to take down the rest for us.

Then the deck area sat like this for over a year and a half, even through the new window and the landscaping we had done.  We just kept the door bolted shut so that the kids wouldn't be able to open it and fall out.

Tracy, the man who did our retaining walls, also does decks and so we hired him again to build us a new deck.  

 And it looks great!  It's sturdy and just the right size and very well-made,
and I love the flagstone that Tracy used to cover and shape the stone slab landing.

     I didn't get a picture of the deck once Mc finished staining it, but now it has a darker brown color and it looks nice and it's more protected from the rain.  (And we did end up repainting that siding to the left of the new deck where the old deck used to be).

     Then Mc and I decided to move that coming Summer.  I'll cover that in the next post.

     We cleaned up the house really well and had an open house, but no offers came in.  This worried me because the Seattle housing market was hot at the time and similar houses were getting offers and closing within a week or two, and we were competing with other newly-built houses in the area.

     The feedback we got from those who attended the open house was that our kitchen looked outdated, namely the countertops and the flooring.  When we first moved in I didn't like our countertops either—I thought the color was ugly—but prospective buyers were more picky now than I was a few years ago.

Getting completely new countertops is expensive and it takes a long time; I had to do something quickly, so I hired a company to resurface our existing countertops, and they turned out pretty good.

     We also repainted the garage doors and the trim around the entire house so it would match the trim on the windows and so it would look more similar to the exteriors of the new houses that were recently built in the area, which it did!  Mc and I painted the trim of the porch the same color as the exterior walls and removed the roofing material, which improved the curb appeal quite a bit (the porch was the last thing we did and I didn't get a picture of it before we moved).  I also changed out the house numbers to stand out more and be seen easily from the street. 

Before, looking rather drab and old:

After, with a crisper and more modern look:

     With all those improvements and a slight price reduction, we finally got an offer; after a little bit of negotiating, we accepted it.  I'm so pleased with the work Mc and I did and that Tracy did!  I just wish it didn't take something big like moving to get me motivated to make the changes that I'd wanted to make for the past three years, you know what I mean?  But you know what: at least we can say that we left the house in much better condition than when we bought it three years before.  😊