The Bag Lady's home is in a constant state of chaos and upheaval improvement, and last summer she started another of her "projects". She has a deck across the front of her house, but she wasn't happy with the stairs leading to the ground at one end of the deck. The ground slopes away there in a rather uneven manner, so she decided to build a step/deck to replace the original stairs.
Here are some photos of the building of the step/deck.
Laying the groundwork:
Some of the lumber waiting to be put into place:
SupervisorCat:
By the end of the summer, the Bag Lady had finished most of the building of the deck. There are still a few finishing touches that she would like to put on the deck - a handrail for the stairs might be ....handy.
She still wasn't particularly happy with the transition from step to ground, so this summer, she decided to work on that a little. The stairs end right in the middle of a slope, and felt a little dangerous to her (when you're as clumsy as the Bag Lady, almost everything feels a little dangerous...)
She also wanted to take advantage of the southern exposure at this end of the deck - she decided another flower bed would be a good idea because her perennials are in dire need of thinning. She added some lattice under the deck, and built a flowerbed:
And she built up the ground in front of the stairs to make it more level.
She isn't quite finished - her little injury interrupted the construction phase, and then the weather decided to be unco-operative (which gave her the perfect excuse to let her finger heal up a little more).
Those green boards that are holding the dirt in place? She was pounding a nail into them when she whacked her pinky. She knows better than to do the crossed hands nail pounding, but somedays she gets a little absent-minded. Then she pays for it. Sigh.
And yes, she did almost all the construction herself - the Cowman loaned a hand one day to help her hang the outside ledger board.
