Five or seven?

Friday Corey finished pulling up the old tile in the BBQ room and Dave and Justo finished the substructure for the deck. Mike had suggested playing with the plank arrangement, trying something different than the typical every-other-plank configuration. At the end of the day the crew brought up about 40 boards and stored them in the guest house so that first thing Monday morning we could look at some options. Turns out we'll need 35 rows which made the math very easy. Alternating rows of five or alternating rows of seven? We're going with five.

Over the weekend we went shopping for deck screws that would match, or at least come close to matching, the color of the bamboo decking material. We wanted very dark grey or black screws. We found the right color but they weren't deck screws so we returned home and went online. If you search long enough, you can almost always find what you want online. And we did. Today, after talking to the Tombleson crew to see if they'd had any luck, we decided to place the order and have the 30 plus pounds of screws shipped overnight.

We also decided over the weekend to go ahead and have the Tombleson guys replace the stairs down into the vegetable garden as well as replace its fencing so that it matches the new deck railing. It's going to add to the costs, but we want everything to match and the old grape stake fence just isn't working with the MCM vibe. Our good British friend Judith has a saying we've been using a lot lately, "Just throw money at it."

Before we left for school this morning, after making the 5 or 7 decision, we walked the property with Dave and Justo trying to resolve another issue that may cause some issues (yes, Judith, more money...). A recent fire inspection pointed out that the 1" pvc pipe bringing water to the guest house was too narrow to pass code. The problem is we're not sure how and where the water to the guest house is coming from. The Tombleson crew has been digging around in lots of places and we're still not sure how we're going to get the new 2" pipe rerouted to the guest house. Mike is getting the final quotes from the two plumbing firms today so hopefully soon we'll get this resolved.