Guest Blogger Post: Managing Humans Demolishing and Rebuilding a Deck

Well you haven’t heard from Tierney in a while so I figured it’s time once again for me to step in and update you on what we’ve been up.

This is Mike the Miniature Schnauzer who lives with Tierney and John, who despite not having opposable thumbs is able to write a guest blog post from time to time.

Tierney and John had an upstairs deck that was on the verge of collapse. John had tried bracing some of the rotting sections a couple years ago but they were one crazy human-deck-dinner-party (you know if the humans started jumping up and down on top of the deck while dining) from a total deck disaster!

Their awesome friends from Bend, Oregon (where Tierney and I used to live) MJ and J (J has a lot of deck building experience) came and visited us last week; and thus began 4 days of deck demolishing and rebuilding.

MJ and Tierney documented the whole 4-day long project with photos; and I am going to share some of their photos (it’s impressive enough that I can write without opposable thumbs, taking photos with a smart phone would be nearly impossible…but with the right dog treats offered, I could try…) in this post.

First they had to take the existing deck-of-terror down:

The backyard got to looking crazy and there was no place for them to play ball with me (humans are thoughtless)!

Plus they kept chasing me back inside because they didn’t want me to get any splinters in my paws (perhaps that was thoughtful…but I wanted to play ball!!!)

Luckily and I had Tierney and MJ (the female humans) hostage in the basement den binge watching television shows and eating snacks while paying attention to me:

Here I am with MJ, one of my favorite humans in this world (she is lucky I love her!)

John and Tierney made sure the visiting humans ate well, making what looked like delicious breakfasts each morning; and what looked like tasty dinners in the evening like the Chicken Piccata with homemade pasta and Caesar Salad they served one night:

I did get nervous while they were working on the deck as it looked like the humans working on it could fall at any time. They of course made sure I was safe (which is what is most important).

Tierney and MJ helped out the male humans John and J by running some errands including a trip to Home Depot for something called “shims”. Of course Tierney and MJ took me with them and I had to help them find the shims:

You might notice Tierney has a bandage on her thumb – it’s not from working on the deck but carelessness while chopping carrots…

I was concerned when there was an attempt to scan me twice while we were in Home Depot – don’t they know the cash value of me would break a price scanner?!?!?!

We also took a trip to Target to buy J some additional clothes as he had “Man-packed” where he forgot to pack all the clothes he needed for the trip. Little did MJ and Tierney realize that there was a “Service Dogs Only” sign in the entry of the store (oops!)

No one said anything to MJ and Tierney about how I didn’t belong in there as they wandered around the store except to say “cute dog”. Well I guess that was my one and only trip to Target unless I pursue a career as a Service Dog (but I am too grumpy to do that).

By the 4th day the male humans finished up the deck and they were so happy! Here are photos of the last stages of putting the deck together and making it livable again:

The deck is not completely done. John has to order something called “matching trim” for the deck, add post caps (whatever those are), and do some painting. But the deck is now very usable! The humans could even have a crazy human-deck-dinner-party if they wanted.

The last day of the project, the humans went out to dinner and then relaxed in the basement den for a movie night. If you look closely at the lower right hand section of the photo below, Tierney is actually working on the quilt she is hand quilting (see her post Hand Quilting Go Boldly) and perhaps sometime this year she will finish it!

Note: J and John are only snuggled as a joke for the photo, they did spend the 4 days working hard, not snuggling.

By the time we took MJ and J back to Human Storage aka “the airport” as humans call it (see the blog post “Human Storage” and Airport Lore) I was pretty tired because managing humans is so exhausting!

On the way to drop them off in Human Storage and then when I returned home

Well that catches you up on major recent events in my life. I will work on getting Tierney to blog on what she has been up to (before the deck project she had just returned from a trip to New York City with her sister) and to have her work on catching up on all her blogging buddies posts!