Well, I guess it had to happen eventually. Our old deck (20 years old) wore out, and a good friend volunteered to build me a new deck. It turns out he was too busy for several months, but this past weekend, he ran out of jobs, and came over to work on my deck. It is framed out of pressure treated pine I think, and the deck itself is “Ipe”, (pronounced epay) a really hard wood imported from Brazil that is so hard that you have to drill all the hole before trying to screw it down. Anyway it is mostely finished, all except for deciding how to finish out the right edge as shown in the picture. We had him (and his wife worked on it too) put steps on two side, and I think we may get a bench along the final edge to finish it out, but we haven’t decided yet. By the way, the picture has been touched up a bit, not the deck part, but the house and yard to make it look more appealing.