We finished the deck last night, by doing the last 16 ballisters for the stair way. It’s an odd sense of both accomplishment and loss at the same time. Since sometime in February I’ve been focussed on the deck as a project. I had to come up with a plan, and make sure that plan was executed smoothly, especially as I had family come in from out of town to help out on it, and didn’t want to waste their time. Part of my brain has been devoted to the deck for the last 3 months, always making sure the next part of it was lined up to go. Now, it’s done, and I need to call the inspector today to come out and clear it.

But at the same time, building something like that from nothing has been very satifying, and I think I’ll miss not building every weekend. Most of the time I’m building virtual widgets, so producing a physical widget from time to time is quite a nice change of pace. I’ve got a set of corner shelves, and a potting bench for Susan that I need to build this summer, both of which will be fun, but not quite on the same scale.

Anyway, for now, I can have a lot of fun relaxing on the deck, before the bugs show up (a couple more weeks). I can also feel very accomplished for having a big summer project done before the summer even officially starts. 🙂