We have been slowly building our house for almost 5 years now. That’s a long time! That’s 1,825 days. In the beginning it was tough to live without the comforts of a home (electricity, water, kitchen, chairs, furniture) but we were so excited to buy a house that those things didn’t matter. We were inspired by the “Do It Yourselfter” shows we watched on TV and by the fact that we wanted to become home owners and stop paying rent (someone else’s mortgage).

We have chosen projects and materials that we can afford (we blew through our budget in 4 months) and completing home projects one at a time. Obviously, more important things came first, (bathrooms, kitchen, flooring) and now we are at a point where we have all the important construction projects done. The only two things we have left are framing and adding French Doors downstairs and building the back deck…and we just built the back deck.

My friends from Jersey flew in for 7 days and build the deck of the back of the house. The footings have been there since day one as have the plans and the ARPE permits, but we just couldn’t prioritize a back deck over the downstairs offices, bathrooms, nursery etc. Well, we haven’t done any major projects in over a year and we have been saving, flew Brian, Jamie and Wil down and they built the deck.

Brian flew down a week early to relax and surf and we used one of those days to drive around the island and find high quality lumber for the deck. We ended up finding everything we needed at a lumber yard in Lajas called Don Benja True Value. We ordered all of our lumber in Spanish (a little nerve racking) but when we paid for the lumber at the register, the manager spoke perfect English.

We are re-doing the back deck with bar tops and trim

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From the back corner towards the kitchen

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Looking through the kitchen window at the girls.

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Looking up at the deck from the backyard

Here is a gallery of the deck going up and the finished product. From start to finish.