The Goose Gate & A Done Deck

It’s official…the deck is done.  Well, pretty much done.  There are still a few final touches for the deck to be done done, but what project is ever really done?!  There’s always tweaking.  Besides…who needs to screw down ALL the boards on the deck surface.  Totally overrated (please note the sarcasm…we just ran out of screws…I promise we’ll finish properly securing each board).  So check it, check it, check it out:

One of the best parts (other than it being a deck) is that it makes our house look way less awkward on this side of the house.  Before, with just the staircase, it looked a little funny.  There was just this vastness of white siding with nothing to break it up.  Now, we’ve got some proportion:

So you want to know about the greatest feature of the deck?  What I like to call, “the coolest thing that Colby has ever built”?  I find myself saying that often these days as we’ve been knocking projects off the list left and right, but this is seriously the greatest thing that Colby has ever built.  He made…wait for it…a Goose gate:

It even locks:

And it’s on hinges:

So it folds right up:

Gasp!  Awwww!  Shock!  Oooooh!  I know, it’s pretty much amazing.  The idea behind the Goose gate was twofold.  One, we can close the gate and keep the side door open so Goose can have free range between the house and the deck (he totally loves it).  And two, if we’re grilling and have people over, we can put Goose on his run and lock him off of the deck so we can enjoy our dinner in peace.  He doesn’t like that so much.  Scratch that…he just doesn’t ever like being on the other side of where we are:

He totally looks like he’s in jail.  Bad boys bad boys…whatcha gonna do…whatcha gonna do when they come for you.  Next let me introduce you to our deck up close and personal, the behind the music tour.

We’ve settled right into the deck…wasting absolutely no time at all.  The patio table and chairs made themselves right at home and Colby was oh so anxious to get the grill on the deck as well.  I’m pretty sure that’s the reason he built it in the first place.  By the way…first thing out of his mouth after we moved the grill to it’s proper deck spot was something something…rule the neighborhood…something something…grill from atop my kingdom…something something.

I’m pretty sure we’ve already spent more time at the table on the deck in the last four days than we ever did at the kitchen table over the last year.

Yeah…we love our new deck.  I would say, “too bad it’s October and we only have a few more weeks of enjoyment before it gets too cold to use it.”  Nope.  I foresee mid-winter grilling going on from our deck.  We’re hardcores.  This will definitely be a four season deck.

Pssst…You can follow the whole deck building process here with the groundbreaking & planning, here for building day one, here for building day two, and here for building day three.  A word of caution….you will never get the time back that you spent reading those posts.  Can’t say I didn’t warn ya!