Yay B!

This is more of a public thank you letter than a blog post. I just wanted to say a huge thanks to AB for coming to my impromptu deck staining party. She and Jeffrey (who came last year) now have priority deck privileges over all other guests at future BBQs. I bet the rest of you wish you'd come now, huh! Well it is too late, you'll have to wait for next year (or 4 years as the stain bucket claims) for a chance to earn your deck privileges.

Darren and I have been planning to re-stain the deck for over a year now (here's a tip - when you stain decking, use brushes instead of rollers, so you don't have to redo it). But in order for both of us to have a free weekend day at the same time... with nice weather... and no rain forecast... and Darren not being too tired from a bike ride that morning... or me from climbing... well you get the idea. Darren is at this moment competing in a 24 hour mountain bike race in Missouri, but I had Saturday free so I figured I might as well put a stop to the endless procrastination (don't worry we've got plenty of other projects that fall into that category, The God of Procrastination will still be appeased.) I planned to do it on my own (not realizing how long that would have taken me!), but AB volunteered (and sounded genuinely excited) to come help.

And so once again, thank you AB for making the whole process fun, for keeping me calm when it started to rain(!), for not complaining about our musical accompaniment, and for staining even faster than I did (not that that's tough to do). Without your help I would still be out there staining in the dark.

Since the original intent of this blog was to help me remember things:
We used "Behr Premium Wood-Toned Weatherproofing Wood Sealer + Finish #501 Natural Cedar" from Home Depot... and didn't need nearly the 5 gallons that I bought. Doh!

Before and After...