Geriatric Nesting Continued

I mentioned in an earlier post that my dad suffers from geriatric nesting. He even admitted this recently and said he was going to start calling me "Leonard" after his brother who helped his dad facilitate all of his home improvement projects in the final years of his life.

The latest project has been to put new rock down to cover the empty space from the juniper shrubs that had to be pulled out after they died from the deer snacking on them last winter.

I personally shoveled four loads of this travertine rock. I actually feel lucky, because we thought with the square footage we had to cover that we would need six truck loads. So I got off easy.

This is what the bare spot looked like before the rock.

This is kind of a half and half before and after.

And this is the finished product. It really does look much better and I am glad that it is done. The young men and women came one night to do a service project and ended up raking and spreading out a lot of the rock. So that made it much easier for me.

The next project was to stain the deck. I did it a couple of years ago, but it was really showing some wear from the bitter winter winds that the windmill companies love so much about the hill where my parents live.
You can see it was looking pretty weather checked. I actually took this one one without too much prodding from my dad. He had mentioned it earlier in the summer and I really dreaded doing it because the last time I had to sand it and painting each of those spindles just feels like it takes forever. He didn't really mention it again so after I got the rock project done and just went and got the supplies and got it started.
When I put the first stroke of stain on I was shocked at the color. I had bought a color called redwood, just like last time. But this is more of an orange redwood and the old color was more purplish. But Dad looked at it and said he actually like this color better. WHEW!!

Doing the flat part of the deck was really pretty easy with a roller and it went on pretty quickly. I was a little ticked after the first day when the neighbors cat took a walk across it and left a fresh set of dirty prints....grrrr.

This project took longer than I anticipated. It took me over a week. I usually only had about an hour to work on it each day. By the time I would get breakfast fixed and a few things done I would stain for an hour and then it would be time to get lunch started. Then the afternoons always seemed to be filled with doctors appointments and other errands that had to be done int town. That was probably for the best because it made me a little less crazy to do it in small chunks. I am not a painter. I like to go fast and hate the precision that is required. This shows on some of the spots where the brush hit the brick...ooops.

But overall I think it turned out nicely and the most important thing is the my dad is happy with the finished product. Now...what's next?!?