I tore down the old deck in the backyard on the May 2-4 weekend, and did a general clean up of the yard. The old deck was supported by cinder blocks buried about two feet deep. I thought about building the new deck on the old supports, but decided just to bury them and put in new concrete posts.

I've found that building a deck is one of things that every guy has an opinion on. The general consensus is that I should get someone to dig my post holes. I called around and for six posts (dug and cemented) the cost is about $250 - $300. I think I'm going to try the manual auger (it's only $7 for a 4-hour rental at Home Depot), and see how that goes first.

At some stage I'll also need a couple yards of gravel and limestone screening. On craigslist there's quite a few people who have gravel for free as long as you pick it up. However, it would be quite a hassle to transport that much gravel in blue bins in my trunk. It's not that expensive to have it delivered, so I'll probably go with that (and then I'll be one of those people trying to get rid of leftover gravel on craigslist).

Jay told me about Google SketchUp which is a 3D sketching tool. I've just downloaded it and watched the tutorial videos, and it looks pretty neat. I'll have to mess around with it later. Right now we're cleaning up the house.