The deck is installed!

Sunday, April 29, 2007

The deck is installed!

It's been almost five months since we moved into our new home. Just yesterday, Saturday, April 28, 2007, our rooftop deck was finally installed on the 4th floor. A pooling problem up there after it rained and a change of materials conspired to delay the completion until now. But the delays turned out to be a blessing. People say that everything happens for a reason, but they're just guessin' at shit like everybody else is.

The builders plans called for the traditional wooden deck, but since we were trying to incorporate all sorts of "green" building materials into our new home, we'd have none of the typical, wasteful, high-maintenance wood deck. We wanted to go with a recycled-type of material, and after looking over the market, we settled on Trex.

While more expensive than wood by about half, Trex, and other composites like it, is much more durable than wood and requires much less maintenance. Low maintenance is sometimes my middle name. Depends. No splinters, no staining needed, no maintenance, no scarce resources being squandered, recycled was a no-brainer.

After an inability to procure the Trex decking, and uncertainty as to why, we began scouting the market again. Our very new, very next-door neighbor just so happened to have had a Trex deck at their most-previous dwelling, and they said it got really hot on bare feet in the summer sun.

Ka-ching.

Remembering that we also lived in Houston, (!) our deck was going to get a lot of sun too....one hot deck, indeed...this is the type of rational thinking missing in Washington these days.

Fortunately, the Trex had not yet been ordered, and now I noticed that only the TimberTech product claimed to stay cool to the touch. We changed to TimberTech. Today, even though we're not in the dead of summer yet, the sun is out and the deck is cool on the feet. And it looks awesome. If I were a good photographer, I'd post a good picture of it.