You may be wondering why a pantry is part of our deck build, but let me explain.  For those with a very detailed eye, you may have noticed an unnecessary patch of siding along the back of our house:


The reason for the extra bit is because behind it is a pantry.
Still not following?  Well, the pantry is actually just a cover-up for an old exterior door.  As our realtor described to us, our house was probably built by a rubber company worker, and this door would have been used to go straight downstairs to the basement bathroom to shower and clean-up.  Makes sense.  Except sometime they added another exterior door 4 feet to the right (probably in the 70's when the updated the kitchen), so they covered the door in the middle of the stairs with a built in cupboard, that we've been using as a pantry since our kitchen is the size of large sardine can.

While the extra storage was nice, it wasn't ideal.  Mainly the location.  The stairway is pretty narrow to begin with, but having cupboard doors open makes it impossible to maneuver.  Let me show you what I mean:


Not to mention, adding a cupboard the depth of the wall in the old doorway leaves no room to add something very important - insulation!  It's nice for only one thing, in the winter I put all my drinks in the pantry and when I get them out, they're already chilled for me.  Not so nice for keeping our stairwell warm.

So now that I've got you up to speed on our stairwell doorway/pantry/chillbox, we can get down to the nitty gritty, tearing it out!

We knew moving in, that we would have to get rid of it, if for nothing else but to add the necessary insulation.  But, since we're adding the deck on, it was a good time to do it and do it right.  The first step was taking off the cabinets and removing the trim.


Then Mike went outside and removed the bottom pieces of the siding to see what we were working with:


It turns out, not much.

So then he removed the shelving, which came out in one piece then folded on itself like an accordion, and the backing.

 
After throwing everything in the back of the truck, (which was later taken to a dumpster specifically for recyclable construction materials), Mike got to work filling in the CMU wall.  He worked from outside mostly, but also came inside and was able to work on both sides.  I was too busy painting in the garage to take any pictures but here's the finished wall from the inside:


Then, Mike framed everything out and added some "GREAT STUFF Foam Insulation" (that you can pick up from Home Depot for less than $5), to fill all the cracks.  (Fun fact, foam insulation sticks to cat fur and whiskers if they decide to check it out when you're not at home, and cats don't like when you try to pull it off - something I found out today at lunch after noticing white globs all over Benelli).



On the exterior, he added the framing and filled in the siding, so now we have a uniform wall to add the deck to.


Now, we just have to add the insulation and a piece of drywall and no one will ever know that a doorway/pantry ever existed.  Except Benelli, who sits on the stair landing and stares at the new wall all day long.  I'd like to think it's because he's admiring his dad's handy work, but I think it has more to do with the fact that his treats were stored in the pantry.  I don't think he gets the fact that they've just been moved and not gone forever.  Or maybe he's just planning another face plant into the foam again.

While I'm waiting for my latest DIY project to dry so that I can hang it up, (hint, hint), I thought I'd share a little of what we did last night.

When I came home from work, I found someone had delivered us some goodies in the form of treated lumber and cement:


We had to laugh, because I don't think the truck driver could have placed it anywhere else that would have effectively made the most amount of our driveway useless.

You'll remember in my last post I talked about the changes we made to the deck design.  We ended up going with the second design and ordered all the materials needed.  Before we started laying out the deck though, something had to go.

Here's a photo of the back of our house for reference:


Yep, our much-used back porch had to go.  And it was time.  That thing saw more action than...(insert joke here, PG or R, I'll let you choose).  It's hard to capture the true state of the porch in photos but I'll try.

First up we have the detached handrail.  You know when you go up a set of stairs too fast and trip a little, but thankfully you can quickly grab onto the handrail and right yourself before hurting something or making a fool of yourself?  Yeah, with this handrail you'd probably continue falling, but also bring the handrail with you.  Not the safest "safety railing" around.  The arrow shows where the steps have rotted out and are no longer attached to the screws of the handrail and kinda wobble back and forth if anyone breaths too hard:


Then we have the Leaning Back Porch of Pisa.  Notice the right side's mean swagger:


Finally, Mike wanted to make sure the overhang was well supported with some 2x6's before he removed the porch so it didn't fall on top of anyone.  But, it turns out the overhang was Superman and has been supporting itself for awhile and could have crushed us at any given moment.  I'll let this highly cinematic video show you what Mike found after removing the handrails and downspout, (sorry I didn't realize I shouldn't rotate the camera when filming, but you get the idea):

Yeah, that's the support not connected to the porch, at all.  The wood underneath had completely rotted out.  Little did we know we were putting our own lives at stake every time we walked on the porch.  Yesterday I forgot my keys, then my wallet.  I could have died 5 times yesterday alone!

So after knowing about the death trap we had behind us, it was time to say buh-bye.  At this point I was lucky I got pictures before Mike destroyed it all.  He wouldn't stop so I just clicked away:


Here's the first glimpse of the pretty green color of the original siding.  And by pretty, I mean how awesome would that color look on a ruffled pillow in a shabby chic room?  As the color of my house though?  Hells no!


And when tools don't do the job, just start jumping on it:


Nice.  More outdoor carpeting.


From the kitchen door, watching the porch fly-by:



Mike wearing his lady headband to prevent the sweat from getting in his eyes.  He lost his more manly one and this is what I stuck him with, then took pictures, then posted them on the internet for everyone to see.  Poor guy.


I was kinda disappointed we didn't find anything cool under there, like a dead body or an old treasure.  We did find some weird old glass jars with dried yellow stuff.  Womp womp.


After the clean-up we were left with just a shadow of what was once there.  Literally a shadow, since they painted around it:



And don't worry, I've only opened the back door to walk out just once or twice.  I've since kept the door locked to prevent myself from falling out.

To a backyard near us.  A while back you might have remembered I wrote about our designs for our deck.  Here's a picture using some online software to remind you what we had in mind:

 
After thinking it over, staking out our yard, and talking to some suppliers, we've tweaked our design a little bit.  Here's the latest, (and most likely final) design:


The most noticeable change is the removal of the second staircase along the left side.  We realized that we didn't need a designated staircase for going in and out of the backdoor from the garage.  We decided to extend the main stair along the front to add more stairs and allow easier flow from the driveway to the backdoor.  The angle of the newly added stairs follow the driveway so that the last step steps directly onto the drive.

 
We're still sorting through the quotes that we've gotten from a few local suppliers, as well as some of the big chains like Home Depot and Lowes.  We've already started preparing the lawn and hopefully we can start something within the the next month.  Which ever design we finally decide on, it'll be a million times better than the blah-ness we have now, (minus the snow), no?