Spring 2016

Winter 2015/16 has been a very wet one. Thankfully we do not live in an area affected by the dreadful floods in Yorkshire. Due to it also being the warmest on record, we have had very little snow. 

I have been able to do very little in the garden due to an injury and subsequent surgery on my shoulder over this winter. That does not however prevent me from planning...

As you know, we have been investigating a replacement for the rotting deck. Surprisingly it is almost double the price to have a deck rebuilt than replacing it with a longer lasting raised patio! I think you know where this is going.

So here is the offending deck. It is an L shape with a round hole cut out (where the two pieces of wood are top left above). The previous owners had a dead tree trunk growing out of it which The Man That Can removed some time ago.

As you can see the deck has been rotting for some time in well worn areas. We have no idea how old the deck is, but if it was built at the same time as the extension it would be approximately 10 years old. I'm told that if well maintained, decks can last around 15 years. We obviously cannot know if this was the case previously, but we have stripped, cleaned and applied a preservation product twice since being here. Last summer we did not because we had decided to replace it.

The holes above haven't been helped by the fact we had positioned two waterbutts here. The weight and any dribbles have probably been attributes to the degradation.

Whilst I could not do any of the lifting or moving of plant pots, furniture etc. I could at least turn the taps on and off for The Man That Can to fill up the watering cans to use around the garden in order to empty the butts. This took a couple of hours on a cold and windy Sunday morning.

With everything removed, the next step can begin. Watch this space...