28 January Plankless Deck 11.jpg

I learned this week that a plankless deck is of less use than a gateless gate: Beware the laid-back workman.

Over the years we’ve had all sorts of workman fixing things around the house: those who drove the neighbors to distraction with the loud Jesus music they played for two weeks, one who appropriated tools, buckets, and other objects which did not belong to him, and three who had to be nudged along with cookies and drinks so they wouldn’t become discouraged and walk off the job. Our current workman isn’t like that at all. He’s very laid back. Very. Which means he’s in no hurry. He doesn’t have any bad habits and is maintenance free, meaning I don’t have to feed him. But he’s very slow.

We hired him to fix the front steps which had become rather fragile and a deck suffering from an acute case of wood rot. On the day he dropped by to give us an estimate---in early December--I had just put a foot through the deck planking. He gravely examined the hole and told me to be careful until he replaced the planks.

His estimate came in a week later and he intimated that he would like to start the next week, between Christmas and the New Year. Which would have been perfect, since I was home while my wife spent the holidays with her family in Southern California.  But it was not to be. The best laid plans of mice and men were spoiled by a couple of feet of snow. The snow melted just as my wife returned. The workman was ready to start but she was not ready to have the rest of her vacation ruined by construction noise. 

We did not hear from him for two weeks. When he called last weekend, he said that he had come down with the flu but was all better now and could start. He did, last Monday. He spent a couple of hours tearing off the old planks and carting them away. Then he left. He was going to finish on Tuesday. But the next day brought no new planks. Apparently the frame needed strengthening. He worked on that for a couple of hours yesterday and a not quite as long today. The work he does is good, but we’re facing another hiatus. The building supply center, it seems, does not stock the kind of planks he wants to use. So he had to special order them. Which meant another delay of a day or two.

“When will you get the deck done?”

“Thursday or Friday; probably Friday. But they will deliver the planks.”

“How about the front steps.”

“Probably next Monday.”

This poses a bit of a problem. Neither one of us realized that we had been using the deck door as our main entry. My wife, who drives to work, leaves and returns by way of the garage [door]. I have been coping as best as I can with climbing over naked rafters to feed the backyard birds and give them fresh water. Feeling like I’m living in a houseboat moored a few feet offshore, I’m devising a system of planks which allows me to reach the shore without wading through the primeval mud lurking below the deck beams. (There is a reason we have an very active sump pump.)

It now looks like this project will take twice as long as planned. I just hope it won’t take three weeks instead of three days. Since the animals are getting restless. The jays and squirrels are furious because a stranger has invaded their garden. The raccoons and skunks are unhappy with him for destroying one of their playgrounds (watching them explore the plankless on the first night was a sight to see), and even the hummingbirds are discombobulated because I moved their feeders away from the deck while the construction lasts (it wouldn’t do for him to bang into a feeder and be doused with sticky nectar).

But the animals will cope. When we had our siding redone, which took a couple of weeks, the raccoons got even with the workmen after a few days by decorating their scaffolding with copious piles of droppings. 

I wonder what they’ll come up with this time?