Let's start with some lovely "before" shots... Note that the boards were painted before and we went with stained boards for the new balcony. Also, its hard to see, but you might remember that the ends of the boards are rotted which is why we are replacing the balcony...
The work started on Tuesday morning (Nov. 20th). Russ was supposed to come in the morning, but I left for school around 8:30am and he wasn't there yet. However, one of his workers was there and had gotten started. By the time I returned around 1pm, Russ had left already; again, his worker was still there. The worker stayed for a while and was still working when I left for class around 3pm. However, when I got home at night, I noticed that not much more had been completed as compared to when I had left... (Mainly, the yard was cleaned up and the trash had all been collected.) The pictures below show how things looked when I left around 3pm - as I noted, it looked the same when I got home at night but the trash (see the picture on the right!) was cleaned up. You can see all the old boards had been removed and the new boards added are in the bottom of the frame.
The next morning, the same worker showed up around 9am and Russ arrived a little bit later. The two worked until about 3pm (the picture to the right is a shot of them working). They put a bunch of boards on and trimmed the ends of the boards that were in place - they had done a rough cut before installing them but did a final cut once the boards were up to get a nice straight edge on the end.Anyway, we were originally told that it would be a two-day job, but Russ told us that he would need to come back to finish up on either Friday or Saturday... Then he asked for partial payment. Aaron wasn't as bothered by this as I was - I thought it was a little ballsy to quit working early (while saying there was just a bit more work to be done) and then ask for some money. I didn't like paying until the job was done, but Aaron didn't want to tick off the contractor... (which isn't a bad point but I wonder whether not paying him until he finished would encourage him to get it done.)
Below are the pictures of the balcony at the end of the second day of work. You can see that almost all the boards are down - there was just a small space at the end that needed filled in. You can also see that most of the boards had their final edge cut complete. Obviously, the remaining work was finishing the last boards, finishing the final cut, and putting up the rest of the railing. (I included the photo on the right to show off the awesome wood grain and how nice the stained boards look, especially compared to the painted boards.)
Russ didn't show up on Friday but he was there on Saturday. He came just before 8am and got to work. He finished with the balcony and he he worked on the balcony door for us; this wasn't originally planned for him to do but he was going to finish early (as compared to what he quoted us for labor hours), so he suggested fixing the door. The carpet in the master bedroom is a high pile and the balcony door (which is in the master bedroom) was very difficult to open and close. Russ raised the threshold up by about 1/2 inch and then used a circular saw to remove the same amount from the bottom of the door. He finished everything up around mid-afternoon.
Before I show you the "after" photos - I wanted to mention something... When Aaron went to pick up the marine sealant from Russ's house, he found out that Russ had a rottweiler puppy. On "Day 1" of the work, I didn't see a dog but I found a large pile of... well... poop in the yard - too big to belong to our dogs. So I suspected Russ had his dog with him, but I never saw it. I thought it was a little odd, but oh well. On "Day 2" of the work, I was coming down the stairs and caught a glimpse of motion on the side patio. I moved the curtain aside and look what I saw....
Russ had brought his dog, Star, with him. I missed out the first day, but went out to meet her on the second day. She was very nice and so friendly! She was a bit hyper though and would jump up - especially at Aaron... We eventually let our pups out to meet her since Russ said she would be fine with them. Bleeker barked his head off but calmed down then. He then wanted to play which she was game for; however, her "playing" meant her paws moving around a lot with her jumping and all. Poor Bleek got scared of her massive paws (I mean, they are huge compared to him!) and started getting defensive. I was worried he might try to bite her or something, so we picked him up and ended that interaction. Bella was happy to sniff her at first but when Star started moving too much, Bella was ready to be picked up... Anyway, I love dogs so I had fun meeting Star. On the other hand though, some people aren't dog folks (silly people!) or might have some other reason why they don't want a dog in their yard (for example, the piles of poop or because they have a dog that will be driven crazy or because they won't be able to let their own dog out).
Anyway, as I mentioned, the balcony was finished on Saturday and its now time to show off the finished product....
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