Huge progress since my last update – but I have a feeling things will “seem” a lot slower from this point onwards. You see, although it looks like he is definitely getting close e.g. all the posts are in and surely you just keep laying the wood used as the foundation until the decking is ready to be put in, yeah? Apparently not. One dreaded word:

Drainage is going to slow down hubby’s amazing progress so far. He really needs a lot of help from his mates.. but he is either too lazy to send text messages out to his friends, or just can’t be bothered, or perhaps it’s part of his little male ego thing of not asking people for help. I’m sure his friends would be more than happy if they’re free / able to come and help for a few hours in exchange for cold beer and food. Plus it’s an excuse for guys to get together and do “manly” stuff and hang out. Basically the next few steps will involve a lot of digging for the purpose of drainage. That alone would take an entire weekend if hubby does it himself. He’s also been doing a couple of hours each day after work during the week whenever we’re actually home and have no social obligations to go to.

The next thing that also needs to be done is to coat the wood with some kind of wood gloss thing (don’t quote me on anything, I have no idea what things are called!). Basically the coating is to protect the wood from rotting when it rains and moisture accumulates around the wood. We don’t need to coat the actual decking wood because hubby spent a little bit more to buy the “Ekodeck” which doesn’t require any painting, oiling, staining and sealing – it’s good to go! But if we want to prevent the wood used as the foundation of the deck from rotting, it needs to be sealed.

So that’s about it for now. He has done an incredible job so far and I really hope he doesn’t get demotivated by the next few tasks that are more tedious and doesn’t actually show more tangible “progress”…