The “Neverending Goolsbee Deck Rebuild Project” may actually be nearing the end… who would have thought? Certainly not me, the man who gave it the name.
The weather finally turned back to sunny. Chris & I were able to finish up the last of the carpentry and whatnot. We prepped for painting with tape over the areas we want saved from the deck coating. Chris is outside as we speak, laying down what very well could be the final coat of “Deckote” over the entire surface.
Of course we didn’t get here without some mishap! I grabbed a paintbrush and hit the areas around the edges where we’d taped and laid down the Deckote where Chris’ roller can’t go. As I reached the very far end of the deck I felt tiny drops of water hitting me. Huh? There is literally not a cloud in the sky, how could it be raining? I looked up and saw a drip coming from the gutter downspout just beyond the deck. It was dripping water onto the railing which was splashing into droplets and hitting me. That won’t do. The Deckote stuff requires dry conditions for application. I reached up and touched the downspout to check to see where the water was coming from. As I grabbed it near where the drip was (nearer the house) the far end of it where it comes out of the gutter let loose and what followed was a deluge of Niagran proportions. The ENTIRE gutter, which stretches easily 35 feet in a right-angle around the roof’s edge was obviously COMPLETELY full of water from the rains earlier in the week. The downspout was obviously in delicate balance and my touching it dislodged it from that balance and dumped the water, along with the wad of crud (I suspect left over from the re-roof we had done earlier this summer) that held the water back. The gutter of course held plenty of dirt along with the water, a good portion of which was now all over myself, and the deck which I’d just painted the edges of. Sigh. I put the downspout down on the railing, and held my hands in such a way to direct the majority of the water away from the deck. Eventually, after what seemed like five minutes of standing there the deluge drained off to a trickle, and I put the downspout back together again.
I wrung myself out, then swept the deck off. I’ll let the sun do the work of drying it. Chris will roller the coating over and afterwards I’ll fill in the missing bits. Some railing work remains, but that is Chris’ job, and in the grand scheme of things is pretty simple. We could be BBQ’in on it by next weekend… Just in time for Autumn!