2007_08_21 Deck almost done - 7 rows of logs up

They have virtually finished the deck floor except for trimming a few boards at the back corner outside the dining room and for the last board or so across the very back of the deck.

There may be a reason for that remaining section not being done, but I don't know what it is. It's almost like they intentionally are leaving it undone because they have obviously moved on to the logs and done quite a bit of work on them since the last deck work they did.

Below is a view of the front of the house now:


The view below is taken from the corner of the house where the laundry room/pantry will be. In the far corner you can see (from left to right) the French doors at the end of the great room, the door from the great room to the screened room, the French doors in the master bedroom, and the window in the master bedroom.


The little dog, below, is the one nicknamed Ruby by Kathy and she is looking at the back edge of the deck wondering why it hasn't been completed. She told me that they had to be a reason for that being left undone, but neither of us know what it is.

Here's what Ruby was looking at in the picture above:

Below you can see a good view of the dovetail joint corner construction. You can also see that the logs are of varying colors from log to log and, sometimes, within one log. After all, wood does vary from board to board and from the sap wood to the heart of the logs so there will be a good bit of variation. Some of the difference could also be due to some of them getting sun for the last month and others not since the coverings have pretty much been blown to heck by the wind, but I'd guess that they'll all get plenty of sun between now and when they get stained and sealed later and that'll likely even out some of the difference from one log to another.

The picture below is a view out through the French doors in the master bedroom from pretty much where you'd be when in the bed.

This little window is the kitchen window so this is basically what will be in your view when looking out the kitchen window except that, of course, there will be a deck railing there too. Rose wants to help us try to figure out what to plant out there to make it pleasing. The bottle of water won't be there (unless we decide to keep it there). The Pella windows haven't been delivered yet. They will come on a separate shipment later directly from Pella.

I may go up there again tomorrow during the day since we think that Scott is going to be there unless his plans have changed.

We have been talking with a company that does installations for both DirecTV (satellite TV) and DirecWay (satellite internet connection) and we want them to be able to give us (and Scott) their advice regarding the type and number of cables and wiring that will need to be installed to get the best quality of service. Since we won't be in a place where either cable (for TV or Internet) or DSL (for Internet) will be available our only options for now will be getting all that via satellite.

The Internet connection won't be as fast as most of you folks have out there now via DSL or high speed cable, but it'll actually be much faster than the slow cable we've had for the last 2 years. We've been opting to take just the basic service that came as part of our apartment rent rather than paying extra for the higher speed connection. If we can live through what we've been using the service we can get through DirecWay will actually be a breath of fresh air!

We also need to decide what company we want to use for a monitored security alarm system and get them to be ready to make sure that whatever wiring we need for that can be done soon.