Time for the Unveiling!

It has really been a long time coming! It was just about a year ago when the whole pool re-do began. And, thanks to weeks of rain so no concrete could be poured-not to mention many other "unexpected" finds that I guess just go hand in hand on a project this large, it wasn't until almost the end of summer that the pool was officially done. Lucky for me, I live in Florida and we had an incredibly long and HOT "summer" last year so I got to get in a lot of use before the temperatures changed.

But, along with that beautiful new pool came a very unbeautiful deck. Because there were piles of bags of concrete covered in plastic, metal tools, huge boxes of liner, etc., the deck came away bleached in spots and stained in others. I always pressure the clean the deck every year but, this year it was once again time to restain as well. Let me just say, this is a pretty large and heavy duty project-starting with the removal of all of the furniture and moving to the pressure cleaning, staining with lots of hand cutting in and touch-ups to moving all of the furniture back in place.

I had hoped to do my paint touch-ups on the furniture while it was off of the deck but that didn't happen so that will be a project for another day!

Luckily for me, my brother and sister-in-law came down to help me with the staining. Just lifting the 5 gallon container can stop me in my tracks these days. We really had a great system-my brother started at one end, I started at the other and my sister-in-law was doing the cutting in. We were going to town and pretty close to being done when I kept looking at the color and feeling something wasn't quite right. The sun was so bright and the stain wasn't dry yet, so we kept trying to convince ourselves that it would look like it was supposed to any time. I am pretty sensitive to color and this stuff was reading a lot more like an adobe color than the Mediterranean taupe that it should be. And, to make matters worse, it really clashed with the tile work on the pool liner.

I finally looked at the container and saw the color name and when I got my paint swatch, it didn't match. I was pondering what to do next when I went to find my receipt and came upon another paint chip...this time with the same name as the color on the container.

After trying to figure out what happened, I realized that I had given them the chip from my deck from many, many years ago. I know, I know...why in the world did I still have it? But, I did.

I called Sherwin Williams and was assured that if I would bring in the second 5 gallons, they could do something to make it better. When we got there, they discovered that the 2 colors we were looking at had EVERY color the same with the exception of burgundy added to the wrong one.

They did some of their paint computer magic and got the old color to almost the exact same color as the one I wanted. Of course, that meant painting EVERYTHING again but, my brother and sister-in-law were great sports and we got at it again and finished in time for dinner. And, the deck had 2 coats of stain now, so that can only help, right?

In any case, here she is in all her glory-ignore the chipped furniture-I'm calling it "rustic" for right now!

Do you see the new bird feeder that I just added by the fountain? This is where you will find me sitting most afternoons. I love the sound of the fountain and noticed how many birds come over to drink from it. I decided to try a feeder to attract even more birds as all of my other feeders are on the other side of the yard.

I knew this was not a squirrel proof feeder but I didn't think the squirrels could climb that skinny, slippery pole. I guess I was naive. All of my other feeders hang and I know how ingenious those squirrels can be to find ways up there but, this was my first experience with a pole. Every time I looked out the door, there was a squirrel emptying the feeder about as quickly as I could fill it. I ended up spraying WD-40 on the pole and, for now, that has done the trick. I don't mind feeding the squirrels at all-I was just wishing that this feeder could be just for me and the birds. What with the fountain, butterflies and birds, this is the perfect relaxing spot every afternoon!

Here is the deck all clean but not restained yet.

And here it is all done. Do you see how much the deck had faded?

As I was sitting pondering life one day, I looked up and really saw those trees over my house at the other end of the yard. We actually had 3 more down at this end that got removed for the pool. They are beautiful but for each sweet, little new green leaf that appears, I see large brown leaves falling before I know it... sigh

And, the gardens are coming back too. The alstroemeria is really filling in and taking over some other plants not doing as well-and, I'm OK with that. As long as something is blooming, I'm good.

There might still be a bit more fine tuning to do (like putting down about 40 bags of mulch!), but compared to this from a year ago:

...we've come a loonnnggg way baby! More spring to come. Stay tuned.