Our deck is finally fixed!

Our lovely dog Cooper...he is still in his puppy stage. He just turned one year old this month...but he still loves to chew and destroy things. He thinks that everything is his to chew on! We are trying to break this habit because it is now costing us a lot of money. Before we had a carpeted deck. We liked it and it was nice to be able to go out there and vacuum it off. Yes, it was old school and a little grampa-ish but we had no plans of changing it in the near future. See below:

Well last month Terry was packing up for a work trip and he put Cooper out on the deck. Well Cooper saw him packing up and normally we bring Cooper with us where ever we go. Well Terry left for his work trip around noon that day. I come home from work around 4pm and Cooper has decided to tear all of the indoor out door carpet off the deck in front of the screen door all the way back to the furniture....

As you can see Cooper completely destroyed the carpet and even though he looks sad and remorseful in this photo he sure was HAPPY to have me come home and find this mess...I on the other hand was NOT happy. In fact I was furious! But since we didn't catch him doing it their was not much we could do about scolding him for it- since it would do no good.

 

We did lots of research on what we should do to fix it. We could of spend around $50 and got more indoor/outdoor carpet just to have him destroy it again. We also thought about getting a paint on sealant product but thought that the deck would not be able to breath underneath and it also takes days to dry in warm weather...which we don't get in Seattle in November. So after a weekly trip to Costco we came across these 12x12 deck tiles that just lock into each other. They were certainly not cheap ($400) but we thought they were the easiest to install and would allow the deck to breath and we figured that Cooper would not be able to destroy them since they are made out of this synthetic hard plastic material.

 

So Terry ripped off the old indoor/outdoor carpet and then pulled up all the old (somewhat moldy) plywood off the deck and we were glad that we found a pretty decent wood deck below. We were able to put the tiles right over the wood deck. We are really happy with the new more modern look of our new deck. Its unfortunate that we had to spend so much to get it fixed but in the end it does look a lot better.

 

 



A little fixin'

We have not been at all fond of our big black microwave above our stove. One because its black and doesn't match the rest of the white appliances we have in our kitchen and two because the cabinets were not installed with a built in microwave in mind. I think it was originally set up to have just an oven vent there. So it drove us nutz-o trying to cook but not really being able to see the stove controls in the back. Plus the microwave was totally old and crusty and didn't even suck up the exhaust when we were cooking! Shown below is our old microwave and cabinet.

So in August we decided to do something about this! We purchased a new white microwave and after talking with our trusted handy man friend- Randy! He told us to buy a new shorter cabinet for above the stove and he would help us install it all. So we did! It took a few months for our schedules to align but when they did Terry and Randy were able to pound this out in one Saturday afternoon! I was SOOOOO happy to finally have this done and to FINALLY be able to see the controls on the stove and to be able to cook and have it feel like normal with out a big hunky microwave hanging down in your face. You couldn't even tell that we had taken out the old cabinet and installed a new one in there. It is perfecto! Plus the kitchen looks bigger to me know that you don't have this HUGE black box sticking out of the cabinets! Here is how it looks now!

 

Another amazing thing about this microwave it it has a HUGE amount of suction. It even has a turbo speed for the fan!!! Sucks all the heat and steam right up! Also the other thing I am completely shocked about is when you turn the microwave on to reheat something you cant even hear it running!!!! It is so quiet! I had to ask Terry if it was working right. I just love my new microwave and the space we gained above the stove. I am one happy chica!