Deck Update!

We've been wanting our deck 'updated' for awhile...  lots of talk, me pinning a LOAD full of stuff on Pinterest... and finally we've landed on a simple upgrade.  Our dream is to have the whole thing redone -- with that plastic type floor, railings, etc.  Not in the budget this year. 

So...  we landed on redoing just the railings, making the stairs more sturdy and then having it re-stained.  

Unfortunately, the company that we went with really struggled with the upgrade.  The main guy had two 'kids' working on the deck, and they struggled.  Bad.  We would watch them from inside and just cringe at how they were doing things, etc.  I know we aren't the pros, but we had a hard time watching...  as we didn't think it should be THAT hard.  Anyway...  after many conversations between Ryan and the main guy, we got him more involved and he finished it up. 

We then had it all sanded down, and re-stained.  I'm loving it!  Now - we should probably get some new furniture out there, so we can actually use it on some of these nicer days!

I don't have a 'before' pic --- but it was the basic, normal deck.  Boring!  Now we are updated to this: