Bedecked

On Saturday, I finished building the deck in the back of the house, facing the sea. It's very simple design, and not very large, but it was a pain in the ass because I built it on the natural slant rather than leveling the land, so each one of the twelve support posts was a different height. Also, since I was being stubborn about building it all myself, instead of more intelligently asking a friend for help, I had to figure out all kinds of ways to hold up, say, one end of a five meter piece of lumber while I was attaching the other. The wood is Ipe, which was heavier than a son of a bitch, but I'm hoping it will reward my efforts by lasting a long time.

I've been visualizing this since we moved in a year ago, and I can't wait until it gets warm enough to open all these sliding doors and have a room that is half inside, half outside. From the dining room, it looks like you could just run out and jump off the deck into the ocean. I'm feeling a bit sad that it's done, since I've been thinking of it so long. Then again, it's not really done. There aren't any steps up to it outside, since I was thinking of having lengths of tree trunks for steps, and I'm willing to wait until I stumble across the right stuff.) I guess I could build a really powerful diving board. And by summer, I've got to find a way to put a bamboo screen roof over it to keep it cool. M was away today doing massages at an ecology event so m and I got a sushi take-out lunch, and just lolled about in the sun while we ate. Mario the cat joined us--for the lolling, not the sushi.