Trex

We decided to go with Trex material for our deck instead of just wood since I'm horrible at upkeep.  The Trex was a little more expensive, but given the fact that I would probably need to replace the entire deck again if we had regular wood, it's really cost saving.  :)  The reddish-brown color was Chris' choice and I chose white railings to go with it.

Deck framing

The framing went up pretty quickly.  The guy who did our inspection was really impressed with the support structures under the deck.

Ceiling Fan!

Our second floor gets super hot in the summer even with our air conditioning running.  So Chris promised me a ceiling fan to help circulate the air in the bedroom so I wouldn't have to sleep downstairs on the couch.  :)  It works GREAT!  I love it!

Still redoing shoddy work

Almost a year after the new addition was finished, we are still fixing things they didn't do correctly.  This one was an outlet in the area of our original kitchen.  It was a double socket that wasn't anchored in properly and was really a hazard to little kids.  So Chris made it a much more stable single socket.

New Deck!

I'm a year behind in actually cataloging our home improvement progress, but we got a new deck last summer!  Getting our plans approved with the county for a permit was all sorts of dramatic.  No two people in that building will tell you the same thing.  It's so frustrating.  But we finally got all the paperwork approved and rehired our favorite contractor to build it.  Construction started in May, 2013 with brand new footings.

The footings are GIGANTIC.  Our deck is going nowhere!  There was a little drama with one of the footings near our new addition foundation.  They jackhammered into the foundation to make the footing and Chris was terrified that they sent cracks into the new foundation.  We called our architect friend, who wasn't too concerned, but told us to contact an engineer to confirm that there was no damage.  The engineer had absolutely no concerns, so work continued!

We added a concrete retaining wall and pad outside our new storage area while we were at it.  As you can see, they had to take apart some of our fairly new patio because those footings weren't big enough.  We also had them dig a drainage ditch along the other side of our backyard to decrease the amount of swampiness that occurred after rain.