Hit the deck!

The mason that's re-doing our deck arrived with his assistant as expected on Tuesday. After unloading their tools and answering my questions about how they would proceed, they got to work. The two men took two hours to demolish the existing tile and clean up. They plan to be back this morning to start work on re-making the deck surface. That includes correcting the slope so that water drains off the deck instead of toward the house.

The "before" photo. The tile looks pretty good in photos, but looks are deceiving.

The mason kept mentioning how the previous deck surfaces were done shoddily. There was obviously a water problem long before we bought the house. Little channels had been carved, obviously by hand, into the original deck surface to drain water. It never worked. We thought we had fixed that when we first had the deck tiled, but no. For years we had a puddle outside the deck door. Whenever we stepped outside after rain, we'd step into water. We had that sort-of fixed fifteen years ago, but water still accumulated on either side of the door.

The poor drainage is the main reason that the deck surface needs to be reconstructed. It's led to tiles coming loose and breaking, and grout disintegrating, allowing water to infiltrate below the surface (and going who knows where). And we still have water accumulating on the deck. The first step was to get rid of the old tile. And now it's gone.

My job yesterday afternoon was to power-wash the newly exposed surface to clean it of dust and dirt. I also needed to clean the deck's outside edge and its annual accumulation of moss and algae. That went well, so the deck is ready for the contractor today. My only worry is that a rain system is moving through this morning. We'll see how that affects what the contractor decides to do. Stay tuned!

UPDATE: He called. Not coming today. Too wet.