The deck's construction, all in many many photos.

Here's the run-down, from start-to-finish, of the deck! Some of the photos are repeats, and this post is pretty photo-heavy, but... well, it was a long process! Here we go!

The "BEFORE" photos, as in "before everything started"...

And then the lilac trees had to be trimmed and hacked and pic-axed before we could move forward with our first stone:

Then it was time to put the first boards into place...

Once all the boards got into place though, we had to figure out a temporary solution so we could get from the front door to the stairs. Some furry creatures loved onlooking at the new board arrangement.

Finally, we had all the  boards into place (though I constantly realized I needed more in certain places) and had the lilac trees sufficiently framed. Time to add a few deck boards! I still had more work to do further down, but I couldn't wait to get a few deck boards into place.

Alas, with that was the end of the deck boards for a while. I needed to create a step from the kitchen before I added any more, as well as frame out where the deck would go into the stone staircase.

That staircase one was frustrating, so I opted to take out a lot of boards for it so I wouldn't have to lug myself and lumber over lots of trippable boards. So began the process of then putting the boards AND adding lots of bolts and additional supporting beams on the second half of the deck....

Alas, the poor gate will have to wait a while until my hanging supports arrive in the mail.

This poor hen was in for a surprise. All proud of herself for getting to the top of the board, she tried to hop off and ended up sliding ALL the way down. Once at the bottom, she was a bit dumbfounded as to how she ended up there.

Finally, all the supports and framework were done!

So, boards could be added. However, since the space isn't entirely square (loathe, sigh, frustrating), this required some extra geometry when cutting the pieces to trim...

Unfortunately, I worked my way to the end... and I was a few boards shy. So, here's how you transport that many boards in a sedan:

Ahh, Goldie, you're a trooper.

And finally, with those boards in, VOILA: A NEW DECK! Here she is, from all her glorious angles, unstained and unfinished, but you get the idea:

With the deck done, it was the canopy's turn. As you can see, the canopy is semi-shaded. It lets light in, but not 100%. LOVE!

All this work was very hard work to a certain corgi. Check out the upright ear on the tree.

And then finally, it was time to pick up the patio set:

And once together, the final thing to do was to have people over (the blankets are on the ground so no additional scratches/spillage on the unstained/unsealed deck would occur!):

Not pretty shabby though, going from this:

to this:

We're pretty happy. And tired.