I”m waiting for everything to be completed before I post indoor pictures of our new kitchen and hopefully that means this weekend. The last bit to do is the back splash in subway tile – by now a cliche but still very suitable for a 1912 house. One thing I am very glad we did was to build the outside deck even though it wasn’t in the budget. It made it possible to have our meals outside and gave the trades people someplace to put their saws while they worked on the house. It also made the difference between putting cedar clapboard siding with a 6 foot ladder instead of a 10 foot ladder! The deck is only partially completed at left but it does show how I tied in the upper (new) level of the deck to the ground level deck. I had agonized over how to do this but I persevered and was really pleased when it all came together. The small building you see at the back is a gazebo turned into a shed. We used some of our old cupboards and created a potting / storage area. The wood for the conversion of the exterior of the gazebo came from the old deck (which was only four years old). We were able to recycle about 95% of it! We recycled the old stairs as well as you can see in the second photo on the left. The creation of that landing (which has not been painted yet in the picture) is how we connected the two sections of the deck. In the far right we have a screened room (the temporary kind) and it gives us lots of options for dining. If the bugs are few then we eat on the upper level. If there are lots of mosquitoes or wasps then we can eat in this room. The tradespeople sure took advantage of this space to take their breaks!