From Trash to Class: Dream deck makeover.

All right, guys. We're cracking open another project. It's time to crack open another one. Frankie Frankie's already started. We don't like to wait. He can't wait for a camera. Nope. When I don't ever ask him to wait. I just say go. Yeah. I don't even say anything. He just goes. Okay. So, we've got a deck and it is definitely It's a green treated deck. And how old is this deck, Frankie? Would you say less than 10 years? >> I would imagine. >> Yeah. Somewhere in that neck of the woods, right? >> Yeah. >> And uh it's just a it's a in a weird corner of the house, so it's gets a ton of rain, gets doesn't get a lot of sun. It's just ab used and abused pretty much. And so we're going to be stripping it off and giving it uh an update, a facelift, and uh taking you guys along for the ride. Frankie's got no mercy on that wood. My shoes broke off. You know, they're stripped out and broke off and got to get out somehow. >> The goal is to refinish this deck without destroying the deck, but still to give it a fresh new look. It had the old wooden spindles that you see on so many decks and that needs to be updated. And we're also going to update the handrail itself. But otherwise, the bones of this deck are going to stay the same and we're going to clean it up and give it a facelift. So, let's just take you along for the ride on this one. [Music] We decided to shorten the handrail from inside of the house. It was always difficult to see through the handrailing and it just looked like you were looking through prison bars. So, it needed to be upgraded. One of the options we decided to do was just take the handrailing down a little bit. [Music] Now, one of the things that destroyed my deck faster than anything else is my fascination with crows. I feed them every single day on my deck. That's the baby. That's the baby. That's the whole family. All five. Oh, we got a couple babies out there. Oh, wow. Mhm. Three. Mom and dad. Mom. That's mom and dad right there. And those other ones are the babies. [Music] And when they're not on my deck, sometimes they just come in on their own. H I look down and I see a mess. It's been tore apart. I don't think the dog did it. And then all of a sudden, there's Kaw the crow. H I wonder who tore my plant apart. Car, get back to your hoop. Get car, get I'm going to come down and move you. If you don't go back, I'm coming down for you. Get back there, Car. Thing listens like my one of my kids. Get over there. Go back to your hoop. You don't listen for nothing, do you? H What are you doing? You're just going to sit on my radio and crap all over it? H, good for you. >> Make a ramp. Yeah, you give it a shot. If we have, we can set it down on a step, too. >> Okay, let's just try lifting it up once to see if the wings fall off. Okay, so you don't shouldn't have to lift. I'll just kind of push and you just don't keep going. Okay. >> It's a clearly Polish thing to go barefoot when you're lifting heavy objects on a demolition site with nails and loose boards and power tools laying all around because why wouldn't you go barefoot at that time instead of just slapping on a set of shoes? This is what happens when you let two pole locks out into the wild without adult supervision. >> Hop out push through the rest of the way. >> I can get the cover on it then. >> All right. >> Oh, okay. Yeah. You want to throw that on now? Right away. I'm >> uh You want to get this on? >> It' be nice. If I ask, I can roll it around, but >> No, no, no, no. We'll just get it out of here. Yeah, you got to pull it apart a little bit. >> We'll put it on the other side. >> Set right here. We'll put it right up. Oh, we're going to put it on the back side. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. It'll be out of the way. Used to think them things were the best thing ever. >> You still use it quite a bit. >> Nope. >> I don't I don't use them >> for offrid. I was like, >> right. It would be >> very well worth it. >> Yeah. But they're not, you know, not really offgridding it with these here. So, this is actually a pretty good size deck. I mean, with all the stuff off of it. >> Yeah. Once you finally get every once you get it cleared, right? >> Yeah. >> Thanks, baby. Nothing like some black soot and white fur, right? It's not as bad as the day I came home and I found my kids had painted her yellow lab. >> Really? >> Yeah. Sugar. Remember Sugar? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. She was blue from head to toe. I don't know if it was Marker or And she just sat there and let him do it, you know. She didn't care. Maybe feeding the birds is an old person thing, but I've fed the crows for years. Well, it's not specifically the crows, but I've put food out that I know the crows specifically enjoy, and I think they know that I've got their back. To the point where one of them got hurt, it was brave enough to decide to make the trek inside. And we never kicked it out. It hung out with us for a very long time before it moved back out into the yard on its own. Here's Kaw the crippled crow. Let's go find out what call the crow is up to. [Music] Hello. Hello. Are you uh hanging out with Lucy? Yeah. Oh, okay. I didn't know you and Lucy were bonding today. I didn't know that was the game plan. You and the dog. Okay. Just wanted to make sure we're completely good with our game plan. You and the dog are hanging out on the couch. Got it. Do you want me to take you and put you back or are you just going to hang here with Lucy? Are you good with it? Yeah. All right. >> I don't know if it's me or if it was Lucy, but something about crows and Lucy and I just they felt comfortable. K was not the only crow that hung out with Lucy and I. We've had other crows in other areas allow us just to walk right up to them and pick them up and hang out with them and then they would just fly off and leave on their own. I don't understand it, but Lucy and I had multiple crows do the exact same thing that you see happen with Kaw. Eventually, Kaw just decided one day it wasn't going to come inside the house anymore and took off and we never saw Kaw again. [Music] Our goal was to upgrade this deck without creating a massive mess and starting all over again. So, we just needed to put a fresh face on this thing. And we wanted to make sure that this deck matched up with the other deck that we just wrapped up. And so to create that look that makes everything flow together, we decided to use the same handrail system on the old deck that we had on the other deck, which is 3in thick oak that's really wide and massive, but we needed to create a good solid base underneath it. Now, on the other deck that we built in a different video, and some of you guys are following along on that, we used 6x6 posts to hold it up. We didn't want to tear this entire deck apart. Our goal was to be as minimally invasive as possible while still giving it a fresh face. So, we opted to use the existing posts that we have there, which were really not big enough to adequately support this structure. So, we decided to use the old handrail below the new handrail as a support system. [Music] The decking itself, although it was still good, it wasn't rotting all the way through, it was severely stained from snow and rain, and especially from the crows, the animal feed, the bird food. They just make a mess wherever they go. They're not They don't clean up after themselves very well. So, the entire deck needed to have a a good washing before we could take it down and start the refinishing process. [Music] The material we're going to use as the handrail itself is 3 in thick and it's wide oak planking that was rough cut sawm mill material. So this didn't come prefinished in any way, shape or form. We actually bought this off from a farmer who was just liquidating his supply and wanted to make space in his barn. We ended up buying this many years back with no clear clue of what we were ever going to use this for. Sometimes when you have a deal fall in your lap that's too good to pass up, you go ahead and jump on it whether you need it or not. And that was this material. I almost feel bad using 3-in thick oak for a handrailing, but I didn't want to see this just sit in a pile doing nothing, which is what Frankie and I basically had saved it up for. We didn't have a clue what we were going to use it for. So, we wanted to create something unique and different to give this railing just its own flavor, and that's where this material came in. It would be perfect structurally inside of a cabin or inside of a barn or something like that. But with no clear indication of what we'll ever use it for, we opted to uh leverage it for a handrail. [Music] I also wanted the maximum visibility. Plus, I needed it to be secure. I'm now my daughter lives with us with two babies and I need to make sure that it's still secure, but I did not want that prison bar look. I hated looking through it trying to peek and see what was going on. and it just made you look like you were inside of your own cage. So, we eliminated all of those supports that we had before and we opted to just go with a cable which is almost invisible. And they sell cable systems or you can just go buy a spool of cable and buy a $45 cable tool and all that does is crimp the cable for you to make sure you got a secure connection. and then put your connectors on the end of each post and boom, you're in business. It's the cheapest, fastest, easiest to create an almost invisible system that I mean, this is the be. It's so cheap to do this. I wish I did this on all my decks, guys. Here she is all wrapped up. show you what we did, how we did it, how she turned out. So, here's the the cable, I don't know, spindle system, I guess. Boy, she's just a simple, easy way to do it. The railings turned out I mean, the railings were all the character of the the actual deck itself. And then, of course, I've got to feed the crows and any other birds. So, I'm just feeding birds. I mean, crows are my bird that I like the most. So, we built a a bird feeder, except they don't like it. All the other birds like it, but I haven't had a crow yet come up here and eat off from my new feeder. But that keeps the food up there and not on the railing. Although, they are pretty messy. But, let's just take a look at what we did with the railing. on us. There's get a kind of a close-up look cuz the railings were all the detail work was done. We buted it up there and then we left some of the little character things like the actual holes in the railing. We left that in on purpose. Uh, of course, look, it's going to be a it's going to create a mess there, but oh well. Nothing's perfect in life, right? You just enjoy it for what it is. But this ties this deck in with the other deck. So, we power washed the deck and then restained that. This is green treated. It looks actually okay. Then we also did the fence as well just to tie that all together. And then we did the upper deck. Let's go down below and take a look at what it looks like from the other side. [Music] So, this now is going to tie all of this landscape down in this zone all together so that it looks like it was all built with intention at the same time. And even though none of this, not one single bit of this was ever pre-planned, this was what Frankie and I built as we went. This is what we call a design build. We're making decisions as we go. and having fun. That's all this is. This whole project was to take you guys along for the ride, have some fun. Let's see what we can build without busting the budget, without doing anything too over-the-top crazy, utilizing the skills and resources that we had available at the time. So now this deck with its unique characteristics ties in with that deck. So that this whole area feels like it was built with intention and not just a pass through. Initially when we started this project, retaining wall, sidewalk, going up a set of steps and boom, you never spent any time down here. Now you come down here with a purpose. And we're not done yet. We've got more we can do. If you guys are doing your own landscaping, enjoy the process. There's no rush, but don't waste time. If you're married, don't put your spouse, your significant other through the heck of your indecision. And what I mean is I feel that if I'm going to tackle something, I have a responsibility to complete that project. Whether I know what I'm doing or not doing, I still have a responsibility to complete that project for the sanity of my family. There's more involved than just me. So, I try to get into these things and get them done so I can get on to the next one and let everybody else enjoy their life and not make my ongoing project part of their ongoing misery. And I hope you guys enjoyed this entire series from start to finish where we took an area that we had no real clue what we were going to do and built a transformation to show you how we tackle every little nuance of a project like this. But that's it for this one. God bless and go get him, you guys. And hopefully I start to get some better action on my new bird feeder. See you guys on the next one. [Music]