I swear DC has not had as much rain in the past 3 years as we’ve had in the past month and a half.  It started roughly the same day we took down the entire back porch structure (that has been protecting the house for 100 years) and hasn’t really let up for a month and a half.  We’re not talking little rain here — it’s been torrential dounpours with weather alerts coming to our inboxes almost daily.  We apologize in advance for the fact that there will be no more rain at all once our house is intact again — surely our project is the reason behind this weather pattern.

The back deck is coming along really well, despite the rain issues.  At the end of last weekend, the entire first floor was framed out.  We didn’t lay the deck boards because we ended up having to go with pressure treated wood and the recommendation was that we let the boards dry out first (ha ha) so we’d be able to avoid using twisted ones.  So, the frame is all bolted together and the deck boards are trying to dry out in our garage.  We will need to stain all of the framing and the deck boards before they go on, but of course this will require a dry day…

You can see a full set of progress photos here.  A couple of highlights are below.

Digging the 5′ deep trenches for retaining walls.

The first floor is all framed out.

At the end of the day on May 31st.